Chinese airline reps heading back from Lambert visit
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
November 5, 2010
By Tim Logan
A delegation of Chinese airline executives will head back to Beijing today with no deals in place to fly cargo jets between their country and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. But they will go with a much firmer idea of what it might take to make that happen.
In an exclusive interview Thursday with the Post-Dispatch, the two leaders of the Chinese cargo delegation, which has been in St. Louis since Sunday, said they like what they have seen, and several times said they appreciated the broad regional efforts -- by local and state government, businesses and the airport -- to bring their business here.
"We can see a concerted effort to make this work," said Li Jiangmin, director general of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, through a translator.
The week of meetings has been pegged as a key moment in the now 2 1/2-year-long effort to establish a hub at Lambert for air cargo trade between China and the Midwest. It's a chance to show executives at actual airlines -- not just government officials -- the nuts and bolts of what Lambert and St. Louis have to offer.
The four-day trip included tours of the airport, meetings with the Missouri Department of Transportation and ground freight firms, and tours of Emerson, Sigma-Aldrich and Caterpillar in Peoria -- the kinds of companies that might fly goods back to China.
While Lambert needs to improve its warehousing and facilities, said Luo Chaogeng, executive vice president of the China Air Transport Association, the airlines on the trip are confident that the airport can meet their basic needs. Now they will go back and study the feasibility of flights and run their market forecasts. One of the three -- Air China, China Southern and China Eastern -- will need to step forward with a specific plan.
"The next step is for an airline to decide to explore this further and negotiate with Lambert," said Li. "That's going to be a very important step."
It's unclear when that might happen. There's no set timetable, though Chinese Consul General Yang Guoqiang said he hopes the process will wrap up "in the near future."
Jason Van Eaton, co-chair of the Midwest China Hub Commission, said local leaders here hope service can begin early next year, likely with a few flights a week.
But it's not a done deal yet.
Launching a brand new international cargo service is a complex operation, and details still need to be worked through, Luo said. Now that they have seen Lambert up close, Chinese airlines can start that work in earnest.
"It will take some time to work out how to interface goods and shipping and markets," he said through a translator. "Further investigation, further negotiation, will need to take place."
