PENDLETON — John Honemann knew the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport had a lot of moving parts, but he didn’t get a full sense of its scale until he started this position as airport manager in July.

“The extent and the complexity of what we’re doing here is pretty cool,” he said in an interview. “This is a neat airport. We’re doing things that no one else has done before.”

Besides the general aviation operations that characterize most rural airports, the Pendleton airport also includes an industrial park, a growing unmanned aerial systems range, a control tower and an Oregon Army National Guard facility.

The airport’s services touch on different facets of aviation, but Honemann’s 25 years in the aviation industry are similarly diverse.

A Colorado native, Honemann attended college at the University of Colorado and soon found himself working as an engineer after graduation. Despite providing ample time for skiing and mountain biking, Honemann wasn’t attracted to the thought of spending his career working behind a desk. So he joined the Navy.

The ‘flying nerds’

Officer candidate and flight school followed, and he soon found himself flying an EA-6B Prowler, a four-seat, electronically powered airplane.

“We called ourselves the flying nerds,” he said. “We’re doing all the not so sexy stuff that fighter guys got to do, but by far the most in-demand and relevant mission across every (area of responsibility), from Iraq to Afghanistan to some other things we did.”

Honemann switched to the Navy reserves when his service ended and continued working in aviation. He got involved in drone work, or the “UAS stink” as its jokingly referred to in military circles, and flew the MQ-8B, an unmanned helicopter that ran support missions in Africa.

Honemann’s naval career took him all around the world, but in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Navy kept him stateside to help battle the virus domestically. He was sent to New York City in March 2020 to help coordinate the 2,500 military doctors, nurses and medical personnel that were sent to support hospitals as COVID-19 ravaged the country’s largest city.

“I drove into New York City and there wasn’t a soul on the roads,” he said. “There was nobody on the streets walking around. There wasn’t a restaurant open. It was nothing you would ever expect New York City to be.”:

Less than a year later, Honemann once again was assigned to combat COVID-19, but this time getting involved in the coordination of a vaccination clinic that administered more than 2,000 shots per day.

As a civilian, Honemann continued to build a career in aviation. He worked at a fixed base operator at an airport in Montrose, Colorado, providing fuel and other general aviation services at an airport that saw a lot of tourist traffic due to its proximity to multiple ski resorts. He then spent nine years working in safety and compliance for the Federal Aviation Administration in Denver.

Honemann’s new home

By the time Pendleton opened its newly vacant airport manager position to candidates, Honemann had been to 48 states and 45 countries throughout his life. But the job intrigued him.

Living in Boulder County, Colorado, at the time, Honemann said the Denver area had grown rapidly in recent years and he and his wife were looking for a small town environment. His son had moved out of the house to join the Marines, but his daughter had just completed her freshman year of high school.

He thought proposing a move would be “the meanest thing to do to a teenager,” but she also signed off on it, liking the idea of a fresh start after a year of taking classes from home due to the pandemic.

Back in Pendleton, Pendleton Economic Development Director Steve Chrisman liked what he saw in Honemann. Chrisman added airport management to his duties in 2013 as the city attempted to establish the UAS range, even though he had no prior aviation experience. With the success of the range and the growth at the airport, the city reestablished airport manager as its position under the idea that the new hire would be more involved with the day-to-day operations of the airport.

With Chrisman still overseeing the airport as economic development director, he had a chance to help select his own successor. Chrisman said he liked that Honemann had military, government and private sector experience in aviation and made the hire.

Since starting in July, Honemann said he’s tried to immerse himself in airport operations while he wants to clean up the industrial park so that it looks better and wants to see passenger traffic on Boutique Air return to pre-pandemic levels.

He will also be involved with the Pendleton UAS Range, although range manager Darryl Abling will still directly supervise drone operations att the airport. While Chrisman supervised Abling as airport manager, he said Honemann and Abling will work as partners. Honemann used a military analogy, saying he would act as the base commander, overseeing all the facilities, while Abling acts as wing commander, managing the airport’s assets.

Honemann said he’s excited about working with UAS again, adding that it’s one of the few aspects of the aviation industry that’s growing and will likely overtake manned flight in the future.

UAS operations have shown no signs of slowing down: The 4,882 operations the range has hosted this year is almost double the amount it did for the entirety of 2020. Chrisman said he’s confident the range can surpass $1 million in revenue by the time the fiscal year ends in June 2022 and thanks to a large injection of funds from federal COVID-19 relief stimulus, the airport has a number of renovation projects covered financially.

But beyond his work at the airport, Honemann said he likes Pendleton as a place to live.

“This town’s got so much going for it,” he said. “It is a good town with good people, good restaurants, It’s pretty fun outside the airport stuff. And we’re going to the symphony on Sunday. Can you complain about that? I get to go to a rodeo and go to a rock concert. It’s got everything.”

Including a mountain biking trail just down the road in the form of the Pendleton Adventure Trails Recreational Area, which Honemann plans to patronize often.