Three US Midwestern airports are battling to be the one to siphon off a major stream of Chinese air cargo now flooding the vast but congested O'Hare airport in Chicago.
Contenders are Illinois' Rockford Airport, 70 miles north west, and two rival airports 250 miles south west near St Louis - one called Lambert-St Louis International Airport on Missouri side of the river, and the other, MidAmerica Airport on the Illinois side.
While not out of the game, few talk of Rockford, partly because local residents proved less enthusiastic about an incoming flood of Chinese freight volumes than the local airport authority.
Nonetheless, Rockford has been demonstrating its ability at ground handLing, showing it can unload 100 tons of China cargo from a packed 747 at Rockford International Airport 45 minutes faster than they can do it at O'Hare.
Rockford boosters say cargo landed at its airport can be trucked into Chicago in almost the same time it takes to unload it at O'Hare because of congestion at the airport and on highways into town.
But even the local Rockford Register Star reports Missouri legislators are considering a contentious US$360 billion tax deferment package to transform the Lambert airport into a Chinese air cargo hub.
But the project has encountered opposition by those who suspect a boondoogle. One objector is an air cargo consultant from Kansas City, which is actually Missouri's biggest city. Michael Webber blasts the plan to grant tax credit incentives to build an air cargo hub as "insane".
Despite supporters from St Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association and Midwest China Hub Commission for Lambert package called the "Aerotropolis", it is built on a "flimsy premise" that there is cargo to steal from O'Hare, said Mr Webber, who has numbered the Chicago airport among his clients in the past.
But Missouri Governor Jay Nixon supports the "Aerotropolis" plan and will include it in a special legislative session he called on jobs and the economy. It's the second time Missouri has tried to pass a cargo bill.
Not surprisingly St Louis' mayor, Francis Slay, backs the "Aerotropolis" too, and promises cargo flights from China will arrive at Lambert Airport on September 23.
But as Mayor Slay says, it's a start, not a hub. "What we need to do is make sure we can convince the Chinese that we can have enough goods to go the back-haul so we can fill these planes on the way back, otherwise it would not be worth the effort from our standpoint or theirs. We have to make sure the freight-forwarders and shippers will send their goods through St Louis and we do have some conditional commitments in that regard."
Source: Shipping Gazette, Sep 08, 2011 |
