Stay Current PSA Newsroom
August 15, 2025
PSA Airlines welcomes four new directors, promotes one more
Charlotte, N.C., AUG. 15, 2025 – PSA Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Airlines Group and leading regional airline, today announced it has hired four new directors and promoted another team member to director.
The newly hired directors are Pat Collins, Director of Planning and Heavy Maintenance; Ryker Chung-Thompson, Director of Manpower Planning; Matt Stewart, Director of Labor Relations; and Brian Rogers, Director of Contracts. Additionally, Christian Roper has been promoted from Assistant Director of Pilot Recruiting to Director of Crew Recruiting and Systems, which is an elevated role with expanded scope that now includes flight attendant recruiting (in addition to pilot recruiting) and management of the systems PSA uses to track and analyze workforce progress and needs.
Collins comes to PSA with extensive aviation maintenance leadership experience, including most recently as Senior Director of Maintenance Planning, Programs and Technical Operations Systems for Spirit Airlines, a role he held for over seven years. Prior to Spirit, Collins was Director of Technical Planning, Maintenance Programs, Maintenance Controls, and Records for AAR, a global aerospace and defense aftermarket solutions company with operations in over 20 countries. Before AAR, Collins spent nearly 15 years between Southwest Airlines and AirTran Airways, where he managed various aspects of maintenance planning, including long-range planning.
Chung-Thompson joins PSA from American Airlines, where he held various finance roles supporting Tech Ops, Inflight and Training and Development before moving to Charlotte to manage Continuous Improvement and Analytics initiatives for American in its Charlotte hub.
In his role as Director of Labor Relations, Stewart brings more than 12 years of experience in labor and employee relations across industries including aviation, retail, and hospitality. He began his labor relations career with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), representing United Airlines pilots, before moving into corporate roles where he supported unionized and non-union workforces across the United States. His experience includes supporting labor relations at United Airlines for their ground operations workgroups, as well as leading labor relations strategy within business divisions at Amazon and Compass Group, among others.
Like Collins, Rogers joins PSA from Spirit Airlines, where he most recently served as senior director of material management. However, this marks a return for Rogers to the American Airlines Group, as he started his career with American Airlines in Dallas-Fort Worth, where he served as commodity manager before being promoted to senior commodity manager.
“We are very excited to have these leaders join PSA Airlines as we prepare for our headquarters relocation to Charlotte, and we’re beyond thrilled to promote Christian Roper, who has done so much to help ensure adequate pilot staffing and an even more robust pilot pipeline,” said Dion Flannery, President and Chief Executive Officer at PSA Airlines. “We always talk about PSA being a place where team members can grow, and in terms of our headquarters relocation, we’ve noted how this is an opportunity to infuse new talent and thought processes into our business. These four key leadership hires and the promotion of a proven and promising leader are an encapsulation of everything we’ve envisioned in terms of the next iteration of PSA Airlines. We’re confident these leaders – along with the rest of PSA’s over 5,000 team members – will ensure PSA continues to provide safe, reliable and high-quality customer and team member experiences well into the future.”
Christine Hollanshead, Vice President of Talent and Human Resources at PSA, said she’s very pleased with how hiring is progressing in PSA’s new headquarters city.
“When we set out to make this move, we did so knowing that Charlotte and the surrounding region are brimming with talented people and many of whom have aviation experience and expertise,” said Hollanshead. “We’re finding that this market is even better than we thought, and not only does the Charlotte area have its own deep bench of talent, but it’s a highly desirable area to attract high-performing leaders and team members. It really has been win-win-win.”
About PSA Airlines
PSA Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Airlines Group, operates an all-jet fleet of dual-class MHI regional jet aircraft. The company’s over 5,000 team members operate an average of over 750 daily flights to over 100 destinations. PSA has flight crew bases in Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas-Fort Worth; Dayton, Ohio; Philadelphia; and Washington, D.C. PSA has maintenance facilities in Dayton; Canton/Akron, Ohio; Cincinnati; Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth; Greenville, S.C.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Norfolk, Va.; Pensacola, Fla.; and Savannah, Ga. PSA has 60 MHI CRJ700 aircraft and 82 MHI CRJ900 aircraft, and recently announced the acquisition of additional CRJ900 aircraft (which will bring its fleet count to 154 once all aircraft have been inducted). For more, visit www.psaairlines.com.
