Amtran this week elevated interim CEO Michele Barnes to permanent status.

Barnes became interim CEO upon CEO Josh Baker’s resignation at the beginning of July, having been CEO-in-waiting since coming to Amtran a second time in December 2023, following an initial stint as transportation supervisor.

After Baker left, shortly after the departure of the organization’s finance director, Barnes and the staff “stepped up more than admirably and kept things going,” said board Chairman Scott Cessna in proposing that Barnes be named permanent CEO.

Board members clapped after a unanimous vote in favor of Cessna’s proposal.

Despite Barnes being CEO-in-waiting, the board conducted a search for a permanent replacement for Baker, posting the job for a month and receiving and reviewing applications, before ultimately choosing her, Barnes said.

The interim for her wasn’t easy, she said.

“It’s been a tough couple of months,” she told the board. “Keeping up with an ever-growing list of deadlines and projects.”

As CEO-in-training, she thought she’d have a decade to learn, instead of less than two years, Barnes said after the meeting.

Baker and former Finance Director Mandy Murphy took lots of institutional knowledge away with them, so Barnes and her staff had to do “a lot of digging” to determine what needed to be done to fulfill procedural requirements and meet deadlines for filings with PennDOT and the Federal Transit Administration — the organization’s primary funding agencies, Barnes said.

One of her main initial responsibilities now will be to find someone to fill the post she occupied before Baker’s departure.

At Cessna’s suggestion, that post will be scaled back from deputy CEO to operations director, to eliminate the presumption that its occupant will be CEO-in-waiting, like Barnes had been — and like Baker had been with his predecessor as head of the organization, Eric Wolf.

Barnes is only 34, and “nowhere near retirement age,” she said afterward.

The responsibilities of the operations director will not be much different from that of deputy CEO, however, according to Cessna.

That individual will work with the maintenance and transportation departments, bridging “the gap” between them, collecting and analyzing data on ridership, on-time performance, preventable accidents and preventive maintenance issues, among other responsibilities, according to Barnes.

The job will be posted internally for a while, then externally, Barnes predicted.

As transportation supervisor in her first stint at Amtran, Barnes worked closely with frontline staff — drivers and mechanics — along with passengers, which gave her experiences and a perspective that will be helpful in her work as permanent CEO, she said.

The experience provided a “unique perspective” on staffers’ working nights, weekends and double shifts, she said.

She wants to engage that staff in helping her decide “what direction Amtran is going,” she said.

She also wants to improve the customer experience, she said.

That may include upgrades to bus stops — including the addition of lights, which became important after Amtran extended its service into the evenings in 2023, she said.

Barnes will get a $5,000 raise, to $95,000, with her elevation to permanent CEO.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.