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Kirk Thornburg, Vice President of Maintenance and Engineering, joined AirTran Airways in 2004. In his position, based in Atlanta, he is responsible for overseeing line maintenance, heavy maintenance, engineering, quality assurance, quality control, technical publications, maintenance control and maintenance planning. He holds a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering degree from Georgia Tech.
He has spent the past 24 years in the aviation industry in various Engineering and Technical Management positions, and has been a most meaningful contributor to the success of the Maintenance & Engineering organization. Prior to AirTran Airways, Kirk served both as Director of Quality Assurance and as Director of Engineering at Northwest Airlines, where he led establishment of Aging Aircraft Inspection Program for the DC9 fleet.
Kirk began his career with the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in a structural design capacity on the F-15 program and then joined Express Airlines I, Inc. where he served as Manager of Technical Services, establishing facilities, systems and processes for a growing regional airline.
Throughout the course of his career, Kirk has been the recipient of numerous industry acknowledgements for his work on aging aircraft systems. Kirk has been a member of ATSRAC since 1999, the FAA’s oversight committee covering aging wiring issues. He has been invited to speak on Aging topics at the joint FAA/JAA conference, various ATA MRO conferences, and the joint FAA/DOD/NASA aging aircraft conference.
He and his wife, Laurie, and their two children reside in Atlanta where he is a recently retired 16- year veteran high school basketball official and also a volunteer youth basketball coach. | 