Following months of discussion surrounding the Tullahoma Municipal Airport, Mayor Lynn Sebourn held the first Tullahoma Airport Steering Committee meeting to start discussions on how to get the airport back on track.

The steering committee’s first meeting was announced by Sebourn during the March 23 Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting, and it took place on the following day, Tuesday, March 24, at city hall at 5:30 p.m. He also announced the following as members of the committee: Kelly North, Director of the Tullahoma Area Economic Development Corporation, Pat Eagan, Air Force, ret., Joshua Abramson, engineer, Karla Smith, Chairman of the Tullahoma Airport Authority (TAA), Sebourn, Sue Wilson, City Finance Director, Jeff Damron, Interim City Administrator, Tom Gillard, pilot, and Charles Parish, President of the Beechcraft Heritage Museum and former TAA member.

Sebourn opened the meeting by thanking everyone who volunteered to be a part of the committee, and to those who came out to attend the first meeting. He said the biggest thing he wanted to do for the first meeting was to let Smith go over the timeline of the last year of what’s been happening at the airport, and then figure out what to do for the next meeting.

“As a general rule, for what I have in mind for a committee like this is to have specific topic meetings and specific stakeholder meetings,” Sebourn said.

He added what he wanted from the committee was to get some recommendations, ranging from operations of the airport to the structure of the authority. Sebourn explained the set-up of the airport is that while the city owns the airport, it created the airport authority to handle the operations of the airport, which was established in 1978.

Sebourn then gave each member of the committee a few minutes each to introduce themselves and give a general background of their careers and what they bring to the committee. Following the introductions, Sebourn then turned the meeting to TAA Chairman Karla Smith who briefly went over what’s been happening at the airport the beginning of 2025 to November 2025. She said she became the chairman following the passing of the previous chairman in 2024, and after observing operations she noticed issues that needed to be addressed, which included how to track and charge sales of fuel, learning that the airport did not have proper insurance following the plane crash that took place in June 2025, and finding out that the airport did not have a drop zone for skydiving that was approved by the FAA.

She noted that is right now on the low list of priorities as neither the Tennessee Department of Aviation or FAA want to own it.

“Eventually we’ve got to figure out where our certified drop zone is,” Smith said. “That’s something we’re going to have to work on here in the coming months.”

She continued and sand tensions between the TAA and staff began in the summer of 2025 as some of the former staff resisted the implementation of the Atlas sales system, which she had the airport began to use after realizing there was access to it, but it wasn’t be utilized earlier in the year. She continued and said after she attended an event in Murfreesboro, she talked with Murfreesboro airport officials about how they operated their businesses and saw how extremely differently the airports operated.

“Cliff note version: discovered all of these Titan manuals that I didn’t see at our airport,” Smith said. “My eyes were opened to their bookkeeping, their record keeping, their quality control keeping, everything that they did to maintain their fuel records, and we weren’t doing it here.”

After discussion with airport staff and reviewing a record book she was able to find, Smith said she got in contact with the airport’s Titan fuel representative, where the representative visited the airport the following day and did an inspection that lasted more than six hours. Smith said it was during this inspection when a lot of discrepancies were discovered, and learned that things weren’t being done like they should have been.

Following the retirement of the airport’s manager, and John Miller was installed as Interim Airport Manager, the fuel spill happened on Oct. 30, and she said she and Miller learned that the airport did not have insurance. The fuel spill would cost the city $744,000.

It was during this time that she and Miller also discovered that the airport leases were in “bad shape” and the airport was way under market.

“We were not following the 2024 guidelines the Tennessee Department of Aviation had put out. Names weren’t correct, spelling wasn’t correct, terms were…nothing matched,” Smith said. “The agreements that were being used were not even the ones that were approved by our attorney, so I don’t know where they came from.”

Smith said it had been a rough couple of months for the airport; however, she said a lot of changes have been made since these discoveries. After Smith finished, Sebourn said as the committee looks through and identify deficiencies, what he is interested in is figuring out what kind of long-term policy directions, and changes to specific policies in place so that certain situations that have been discussed does not happen again.

Smith responded and said the TAA needs help with setting up checks and balances, updating policies and procedures and updating minimum standards. In a positive update, Smith said the staffing situation is better than what it was earlier in March, thanks to the help of Damron, and the airport being able to retain one of its employees. She noted that the airport is still in need of staffing.

The majority of the hour and a half meeting was discussion among the committee about what topics and solutions they will need be tackling and handling for the foreseeable future, which include safety, security, maintenance, finances, tourism, public relations, increasing airport activity and other challenges.

With all the challenges laid out, Sebourn and Smith believe that the airport’s future is bright because of the progress that has been made alongside interim Airport Manager Ashley Udick. Since the city Sebourn said the city will not go bankrupt because it subsidizes the airport, which budgets about $160,000 to the airport.

“It seems pretty clear to us that just looking at the first rough numbers… we’re thinking within a few years we can be at the breakeven point and that would be a huge benefit,” Sebourn said. “We’re not in an unusual situation there at all, but I think we can get in a positive direction.”

The next meeting will take place on Tuesday, April 7, at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, where the committee will focus on the topic of safety at the airport.