STORY BY Dawn Tolbert
Photography by Brant Sanderlin
Creative vision, analytical thought and collaborative work are tools Tina Culver Kinsey (92C) relies on every day as she tackles duties that touch the lives of the 2.25 million people who travel through the fast-growing Asheville airport each year. But when Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, she was challenged to improvise in ways that tested her like never before. She responded with grit and resilience – traits that define the people of the mountain region she loves.
Kinsey has spent countless hours planning and practicing crisis response during her 15 years as an administrator at Asheville Regional Airport (AVL) in the mountains of North Carolina. Still, nothing could have prepared her for the sensation of being virtually cut off from the outside world when she and husband Geoff (92C) awoke Sept. 27, 2024, to the aftermath of the historic storm.
Neither the Kinseys nor their neighbors expected a major hurricane to wreak havoc in their mountain community, but Helene was no normal storm, roaring ashore with category 4 intensity in the “Big Bend” region of Florida before racing inland and delivering torrential rain and devastating winds to areas of Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas hundreds of miles from landfall.
That morning, the couple found themselves “living on an island,” with downed power lines and trees on one side and the rising French Broad River on the other. Cell phone service was out; electricity soon followed. They only knew what they could see and felt blessed as the river crested before reaching their house and storm clouds gave way to blue skies.
“A slow awakening” to Helene’s immense impact was accompanied by a powerful realization that her longtime employer was now “the gateway to western North Carolina” in a very real sense, serving as a vital lifeline for a region and people suddenly accessible only by air. Kinsey immediately leapt into action trying to reach someone … anyone … so she could do her part to support recovery efforts in her role as chief administrative officer at the airport.
It would be 12 hours before she finally got a connection, calling from “a pocket of 5G” she found while hiking down the road. She was gratified to learn that the airport sustained only minor damage, with operations overseen by a team of essential employees on site during the height of the storm.
Relieved, Kinsey turned her attention to getting communications up and running – a job that proved to be every bit as difficult as reaching her colleagues in the first place.
“We have well thought out, written plans, and we drill constantly,” she emphasized,” but when you wake up and can’t talk to anybody, put your eyes on the situation or get on the internet to see what has happened to your region – we had no idea! Do you really ever think the entire communication structure is going to collapse for your entire region? No. You don’t.
“We’re going to have one hell of a debrief after all of this.”
Adjusting on the fly
Promoted in July 2024 to her current role on AVL’s four-person executive team, Kinsey’s chart of leadership responsibilities includes business and property development as well as marketing, public relations, customer service, information technology, human resources, administration and air service development. In the storm's wake, her immediate priorities were checking on employees, communicating with businesses that operate out of the airport, and disseminating information to passengers and the public.
All this was done from a makeshift “office” in her gray Nissan Pathfinder until floodwaters receded sufficiently for her to reach the airport – a process that took three days. Even when Kinsey could call out, few had cell phone service to answer. Unable to access the full suite of digital communications tools detailed in their crisis plans, she relied on the airport’s Facebook page to share updates.
With her former role of airport spokesperson as yet unfilled, she assumed that responsibility as well. Tackling her duties from the car, Kinsey eventually gained assistance from public information officers who rushed to AVL as part of mutual-aid agreements with sister airports from across the Carolinas and Tennessee and as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Teams of experts in operations, maintenance, custodial work, emergency response and public safety also descended on the facility, rallying together to help keep the airport up and running at a time when Kinsey and her colleagues were balancing work with a tragedy intensely personal in scope.
“Normally, when you plan for a crisis at an airport, it’s all hands on deck,” she underscored, “but this crisis affected every employee AND the entire region, their families, friends, homes, churches. Our team members needed to be able to focus on the crisis personally, and we are grateful for the visiting teams that worked with us for several weeks.”
Activity at AVL reached extraordinary levels at the height of hurricane response. On a typical busy day, the airport accommodates 300 flights. After Helene, that number soared to between 900 and 1,000 each day, among them helicopters, C-17s and other military aircraft; commercial flights; and general aviation aircraft carrying emergency supplies.
Plans to soar again
By late October, work at AVL began to return to a more familiar rhythm, though restoration and recovery efforts throughout the region will continue for much longer.
“Right now, from an air service perspective, the demand has just plummeted, and rightly so,” Kinsey expressed. “Community leaders are saying, ‘Don’t come. We’ve got to get our house back in order.’ That makes all the sense in the world, but as a businesswoman in the aviation industry, I’m already thinking about what our recovery looks like to get back to the momentum that we’ve had for so long.”
The airport’s momentum – like that of the region it serves – has been impressive. When Kinsey first became head of marketing, public relations and air service development in 2010, AVL served 700,000 passengers per year. As of 2023, that number had surged by more than 221% to 2.25 million.
For years, Kinsey and her peers have worked hard to anticipate and surpass demand for the fast-growing region. The four-county Asheville metropolitan area is home to approximately 450,000 residents, and in 2023 the largest of those counties attracted 12 million visitors. The area also has seen an influx of bleisure travel by individuals who choose to come to the scenic mountain community for extended stays combining pleasure and remote work.
To meet future growth projections, AVL is building a new concourse – 150% larger than the existing airport – that will accommodate up to 4 million passengers annually. Beyond that, plans are already in development for additional future expansions.
“It’s quite a puzzle to put all of that together in our landlocked mountain setting,” Kinsey explained. “The decisions we are making will impact this community for decades. My grandkids are going to fly out of this airport that I had the privilege to sit with the team and help dream about, design and bring to fruition.”
Gearing up for the journey
The flexibility required by Helene, as well as Kinsey’s ability to think strategically and thrive within a collaborative environment, showcase creativity and analytical skills first glimpsed as a Berry student majoring in speech communication and minoring in business administration.
“There’s a strong part of my brain that is geared toward business and analytics,” she stated. “Berry was a wonderful place to transition from being a dependent teenager to becoming an independent thinker. There was a focus on teaching me to think, question, and analyze and to realize that it is okay to be a little bit uncomfortable when I don’t understand everything.”
An internship she found by “pulling out the big fat phone book to flip through the yellow pages” enabled Kinsey to put those skills in action in the world of corporate public relations. That summer opportunity at Northeast Georgia Medical Center translated into a full-time job post-graduation that she held until relocating to Colorado for graduate school. While earning a master’s degree in speech rhetoric, she had every intention of beginning a career in academia and following in the footsteps of her Berry mentor, speech communication professor Dan Panici (FFS). Then a different path took shape.
“The analytical side of my brain told me I needed to go out and use the training I’d gotten in the business world before I thought about entering academia,” Kinsey recollected. “Here I am 30 years later still doing that.”
Plotting a destination
Though they attended the same high school in Cumming, Georgia, she and Geoff actually met in the shadow of Berry’s Lavender Mountain. Both share a love for the outdoors and declared themselves “mountain people” while trekking through the Rockies and later settling in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Free time included hiking, whitewater kayaking and generally soaking up the natural beauty of the region they chose as their home.
Professionally, Kinsey returned to health care public relations and marketing at Transylvania Regional Hospital in Brevard, earning a promotion after five years to vice president of business development. Responsibilities included leading multiple initiatives, starting new service lines, and working with colleagues on financial projections and planning.
As her responsibilities grew, the mother of four felt the need to transition into a role providing opportunities for greater work-life balance. A chance conversation with a colleague she knew through a regional professional organization – just a tiny blip on life’s radar – revealed new horizons. Answering with a firm, “I think so,” when asked if she was serious about trying something new, Kinsey was introduced to the executive director of the Asheville airport, who had spent months trying to find just the right person to fill an opening there.
“Two weeks later, there I was, giving my notice and taking a huge leap into a new industry,”
she marveled. “It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
Flying forward
While working in aviation was not a route Kinsey would have charted for herself, she finds joy in being part of “a cool fraternity of people who just get it.”
She added, “We joke that when you work in aviation jet fuel gets in your blood, and it’s true. It’s a roll up your sleeves and get it done kind of industry, which I really jive with. We all have the capacity to find challenge and joy in many paths; it’s the choices you make along the way that open different doors. Would I have ever thought that I would be doing this at an airport? No! But I’m so glad that I am.
“I think that’s one of the benefits of a strong liberal arts education: you develop openness,
a creative mind, and the ability to navigate lots of scenarios and tailor your skills to various situations. Truly, that has been my journey.”
Looking back on the shared experience of Hurricane Helene, Kinsey draws inspiration from the spirit of her colleagues and the strength demonstrated by her mountain neighbors.
“I saw the best in the team here,” she declared. “Their dedication and determination, grit and tireless work made me want to do better, to dig deeper. On a personal level, we were fortunate. Our kids are fine. We had minor damage, but right down the road, good friends of ours lost their home; they are now living with us. There was a lot of death. We wonder, ‘Why were we fortunate and others lost their homes or loved ones?’
“The thing about the people in this area is everybody was out helping their neighbors, cutting trees, cleaning up, and checking on each other,” Kinsey added in awe.
The experience has left a lasting impact.
“I’m a different person than I was before,” she reflected. “And that is because I have been a part of something much bigger than just me, much bigger than the airport. It’s sobering and still raw. I’ve really seen that these mountain people have got some grit.”
Editor’s Note: Work on this story was well underway when Helene struck. Tina was kind enough to make time for an additional interview in the midst of recovery efforts. We’re grateful to have this opportunity to share news of her career accomplishments, as well as her experiences during and after the storm. In doing so, we also extend best wishes for comfort, healing and restoration to all those affected by the devastation, including many in our Berry family.
