{"id":193686,"date":"2026-03-16T16:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T16:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/193686\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T16:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T16:48:17","slug":"st-petersburg-clearwater-international-airport-names-new-director-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/193686\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport names new director"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Pinellas County has appointed Mark Sprague as the new director of St. Pete\u2013Clearwater International Airport (PIE).<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Sprague has been with the airport since 2015, serving as deputy director and, most recently, interim director, where he oversaw daily operations, emergency management and planning for a new terminal and parking structure. His 25\u2011year aviation career includes work as an airline pilot and roles in airport operations at Reagan National and Dulles airports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">He also worked as an airline transport pilot for both Comair and Spirit airlines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cMark melds diverse work experience in the pilot seat, the boardroom and the community to keep our airport operations safe, efficient and productive,\u201d Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton said in a statement. \u201cHis expertise in operational analytics, emergency response, FAA and TSA compliance, and stakeholder engagement positions him to lead PIE into its next phase of growth and service excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pinellas County has appointed Mark Sprague as the new director of St. Pete\u2013Clearwater International Airport (PIE). Sprague has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[6731,21661,90049,37156,596,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-193686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-airport","tag-emergency-management","tag-interim-director","tag-mark-sprague","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}