KC Yanamura was appointed to the position of Deputy Regional Administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Northwest Mountain Region in November 2006. A member of the Senior Executive Service, Ms. Yanamura contributes to the leadership of FAA’s efforts in the seven-state region of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, and also serves as the Regional Emergency Transportation Coordinator (RETCO) for the Department of Transportation’s Regions 9 and 10 (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawaii/Guam). In her RETCO role, Ms. Yanamura provides executive leadership to ensure transportation emergency planning and response for Incidents of National Significance.
Previously, Ms. Yanamura was the Assistant Manager of the Transport Airplane Directorate (TAD) Aircraft Certification Service. She supported and acted in the absence of the TAD manager in overseeing the continued operational safety of the 14,000 transport category airplanes that are operated in the U.S. The TAD consists of approximately 400 employees working in one Transport Standards Staff Office, three Aircraft Certification Offices (ACO), one Boeing Certificate Management Office (CMO) and four Manufacturing Inspection District Offices (MIDO) with engineering, manufacturing and administrative activities involving all aeronautical products within the geographical boundaries encompassing 11 Western states. In this capacity, she also actively participated in the engineering and manufacturing decisions concerning the new B787, B747 Large Cargo Freighter, B747-8, B747-8F, Embraer and Airbus programs. Prior to being the TAD Assistant Manager, she served as the Manager of both the TAD MIDO and the Boeing CMO.
Ms. Yanamura has considerable international experience, as well as a solid understanding of the agency’s Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) initiatives and developing the Safety Management System (SMS) culture within the FAA. She was also involved in the Aviation Safety (AVS) organization’s recent International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001:2000 certification effort, which resulted in AVS being recognized as the first federal agency to achieve certification to the prestigious quality management standard.
Ms. Yanamura joined the FAA in 1990 as an aviation safety inspector in the Seattle MIDO. She participated in the FAA’s new type and production certification for the B777 and B737 Next Generation programs. Before that, she worked for the United States Air Force for about 7 years as a quality assurance specialist on various Boeing model airplanes, space defense and missiles systems.