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Kirk Thornburg
Vice President
Maintenance and Engineering
AirTran Airways
PMBA 2009 | Kirk Thornburg: PMBA 2009
Kirk Thornburg, Vice President of Maintenance and Engineering at AirTran Airways, desired to complement his aviation technical background with an enhanced set of business skills to manage a rapidly expanding Airline Maintenance and Engineering Department. Responsible for the configuration, maintenance program and safe operation for all AirTran aircraft, engines and equipment, Kirk increasingly found skills in risk management, project leadership, personnel assessment and financial analysis critical to his department's success.
Kirk chose the Robinson Professional MBA program based on the recommendations of several colleagues who had attained MBA degrees at Georgia State. Seeking to use company case studies and colleague interactions as primary methods of learning, he found the cohort/study group program format very attractive. Entering his second year in the PMBA program, Kirk is using skill sets in activity-based budgeting and discounted cash flows to make better decisions at AirTran. While Kirk waited until later in his career to study for his MBA, many of his colleagues in Aviation who MBAs 10 and 20 years earlier tell Kirk that he is gaining a perspective on a global economy and e-commerce that were not envisioned at the time they received their MBAs.
As a newly appointed Vice President, Kirk opted for the Professional MBA format over the Executive MBA format as the demands of a growing airline dictated his presence every day during the week. As such, the Thursday evening, all-day Saturday, every-other week format fit best into his time demands. While he misses his family time on school days, his two teenage children benefit from seeing their father commit to furthering his education. His children might tell you that occasionally Dad has to come to them for some help in accelerated math concepts, but Kirk is quick to say that he's simply making sure his family feels a part of the whole program process.
Kirk will graduate in August 2009 in the Downtown Cohort and will seek a concentration in Finance. Kirk explains that "the demands of the airline industry in 2008 are such that corporate and aircraft financing strategies are extremely critical. For an airline today, no existing business model exists that will work in the face of today's high oil prices. The PMBA program at GSU has been timely for me as we at AirTran develop an entirely new set of business criteria for airline operation in America."
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