Who got that job?

Were you one of the people who applied for this job and wondered who got it?

Job title: Chief executive officer.

For: Hamilton International Airport.

Hugh McCarroll, 59, lives for planes, and has done all his life.

He has a pilot's licence and is a past president of the London-based Royal Aeronautical Society.

McCarroll did the most recent of his 88 parachute jumps four years ago, and is something of an expert on aviation's pioneers.

"I can bore you blind on the Wright brothers," he says.

After 17 years with Christchurch airport, where he is general manager of operations, and before that with Qantas in Sydney (nine years) and Seattle (three years), he has now been selected to lead Hamilton's airport as its chief executive officer.

He is moving from Christchurch, where he lives 3km from the airport, for a start in April.

McCarroll grew up dreaming of an Air Force career.

"But my eyesight wasn't good enough - and I thought it was the end of the world."

However, he went on to graduate from Canterbury University with a mechanical engineering degree.

At Qantas, he started in technical services before working his way through management positions.

McCarroll was thinking of retirement in a couple of years when approached to take the Hamilton CEO's post.

The thought of "a new challenge, a refreshing challenge" and strong local loyalty towards the airport convinced him to say yes to the opportunity.

He will bring with him to Hamilton a grand passion for things with wings.

Flight, he says, "is a pretty neat trick - one of mankind's greatest achievements".