Kristi has been a dedicated employee, always striving for compliance, meeting deadlines, achieving organizational goals, customer goals, building teams and always looking to do more, says Trevor Dunn, who nominated Burns for this award and is project manager at Airborne Maintenance and Engineering Services.
Kristi started her career in the aviation field at the age of 16 when she became a teen sorter for the Airline, then moved to the ramp where she assisted in loading of the aircraft. Her next endeavor was in Airline Sort Maintenance where she aided in keeping the sort operations up and running. Then she had an opportunity to move over to the Airline Shops where she started as a cleaner, working on the cleaning of multiple components to keep the shops on track. When they needed additional help, she would assist other areas from the wheel and brake shop, engine shop, wire shop, structure shop and manufacturing as a floater all within the airline. Then, as the airline operations wound down, she transferred to MRO and continued to help when and where needed as a utility technician.
While being a utility tech, she went to school locally to obtain her airframe license to become a structures tech then continued with OJT's to test and obtain her P rating. "This shows her initiative to always go over and above to support the mission," noted Dunn. When transferred to the hangar, she sought opportunities to expand her knowledge, participating in engine runs, marshalling, towing and other facets of the operation.
"Kristi seeks out opportunities to mentor those that want to get into the aviation industry, as she herself was mentored by a slew of individuals as she worked her way up in her career path both in the airline and the MRO," stated Dunn. "She encourages others and promotes others to achieve their goals in this industry, giving them opportunities to succeed. She has had many of her own assigned technicians come from the internal Structural Tech program and had those on her established team participate in the mentoring themselves.
Burns attended general familiarization classes for Boeing Airframes. She also has a designated training rating for MRO, PIT (power industrial truck), has held an RII Authorization and AWR (airworthy release) Authority, along with several customer and MRO training CBT on a continual basis.
She conducts organizational daily safety briefings with her team, keeping herself and the team updated on critical topics within the organization and the industry. "Kristi is always striving to get to know and understand each of her internal and external customer needs so that she can build trusting and reliable relationships to meet their needs while reducing cost, while maintaining a high level of reliability for them and the MRO," Dunn said.
What motivated Burns to join the aviation career path was her family. Her father, mother, sister and husband are all in aviation.
