Las Cruces airport manager retires

LAS CRUCES — Andy Hume, the head of Las Cruces International Airport since 2017, has retired, the city announced in a news release during the holiday week.

The announcement featured no statement from Hume, who presided over a period of extensive planning and development of the municipal airport adjacent to an industrial park on the city’s west side. 

Succeeding Hume will be Blake Davenport, whom the city appointed as interim airport manager effective Thursday. Davenport joined the city in May as a risk manager, with a background of more than two decades in the aviation industry.

According to the city, Davenport began his career at Delta Airlines, where he worked in maintenance and insurance, had been a consultant in aviation underwriting and claims management and an insurance broker for airports in Lubbock and Amarillo, for El Paso International Airport and the Doña Ana County International Jetport in Santa Teresa.

Hume had worked at the city for just over 24 years. Prior to his post at the airport, Hume had worked in the city’s community development and economic development departments. Before starting at the city in 2001, he had been a senior planner with the Las Cruces Metropolitan Planning Organization. Hume moved from economic development to an interim administrator role at the airport before being formally appointed in 2018.

The airport operates three runways and offers commercial passenger service to and from Albuquerque among its operations. Last April, Hume presented an updated master plan to city leadership highlighting a federally approved forecast of aviation activity, including interstate passenger air service, with plans to upgrade infrastructure with $2 million in state appropriations and plans in the works for economic development in collaboration with the industrial park.

Hume also presided over challenging times at the airport. In 2024, pilot Chuck Coleman was killed during a solo aerobatic performance at the second annual Las Cruces Air and Space Expo. The airport inaugurated a new air racing and expo event, SkyFiesta, in October.

Hume was also reprimanded and suspended by City Manager Ikani Taumoepeau’s office during 2025 in a dispute over Hume’s authority after he reassigned a city employee who — according to a Federal Aviation Administration investigation, Hume’s own accounting and a complaint by a fixed-base operator at the airport — had repeatedly violated ground security procedures from 2023 to 2025. 

Hume had assigned the worker to duties outside airport movement areas such as runways and limited his activities in operating areas, but the city ordered Hume to restore the worker to those areas and took disciplinary action when Hume stood his ground, according to presentations for the FAA. Hume wrote to an investigator that the employee “should not return to working within the movement area of the airfield.”

The city did not publicly respond to Hume's portrayal of events, citing confidentiality of personnel matters. 

In September, the FAA  presented 52 findings pertaining to the airport’s management and ground safety issues, citing an “organizational culture void of shared values, beliefs, and behaviors relative to the work environment.” The findings are subject to review at the airport's annual inspection.

Algernon D’Ammassa is the Journal’s southern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at adammassa@abqjournal.com.