"Air Cargo Increase Is Good Indicator For Reno"

Monday, September 23, 2002

Air Cargo Increase Is Good Indicator For Reno 
By Anne Knowles
The Northern Nevada Business Weekly


The bad news is passenger traffic keeps falling. The good news is cargo
traffic through the Reno-Tahoe International Airport is soaring.   

In August, air cargo traffic rose about 17 percent, from 8.1 million
pounds in 2001 to 9.5 million pounds in 2002, according to the airport. 

Cargo traffic through Reno has been growing since April, when it jumped
almost 11 percent from the same month a year earlier, after dropping off
an average of 6.5 percent in the first three months of the year. That
bumps up Reno cargo air traffic almost 7 percent for the first eight
months of the year, to 69.7 million pounds from 65.3 million pounds in
2001.   

That's something for everyone to celebrate since air cargo traffic is
considered an early economic indicator.  

"Air cargo is one of the first indexes when a nation's economy begins to
soften," said Adam Mayberry, manager, public affairs at the Washoe
County Airport Authority in Reno. The jump in traffic, he said, "is a
good indication of a recovery." 

It is also a sign of the boom in northern Nevada since the rise in the
region's cargo traffic outpaces growth nationwide. In July, for example,
cargo traffic in North America rose 10.5 percent, according to the
International Air Transport Association in Geneva, Switzerland. That
same month it jumped almost 20 percent in Reno.  

"The area continues to diversify and we continue to see an increase in
warehousing and distribution," said Mayberry. "When you fly in and out
of Reno you see a lot of tin roofs." 

Those businesses include Amazon.com, which has a facility in Fernley, as
well as one of its distributors, Baker & Taylor, and Barnes & Noble, the
bookstore giant that has a warehouse in Reno.  

"The Internet is also a major factor," said Stan Bernstein, CEO of
Heritage Turbines in Plymouth, Mass., and president of the recently
established Regional Air Cargo Carriers Association. "The net end result
of every click to buy online is a package that gets shipped." 

As a result, said Bernstein, the most dramatic increase in cargo traffic
is in small, individual packages going to a single customer - such as
the book buyer who purchases products from Amazon.  

General bulk cargo - hundreds or thousands of packages being shipped to
or from a single company - is on the decline, said Bernstein, although
it may still be substantial in manufacturing and warehousing regions
such as Reno.  

Another major reason for increasing traffic nationwide is Federal
Express's year-old contract to be the U.S. Postal Service's air carrier,
according to the airport authority's Mayberry.   

The amount of mail rose dramatically between August 2001 and 2002. Mail,
both delivered and picked up, jumped 250 percent, from 371,669 pounds
last year to 1.3 million pounds this year.  

In fact, FedEx claims the lion's share of the increase in cargo traffic
in Reno. In August, FedEx's traffic through Reno jumped nearly 67
percent, to 39.2 million pounds this year from 23.5 million pounds in
2001. FedEx competitor Airborne Express Inc. comes close - in terms of
growth - with a 57 percent rise in August traffic, shipping 3.5 million
pounds in 2002 versus 2.2 million pounds a year earlier.   

All of that comes at the expense of smaller carriers. Six carriers -
Alpine Aviation, Delta Airlines, Empire Airlines, Kitty Hawk Air Cargo,
Union Flights and West Air - that flew out of Reno a year ago no longer
do business at the airport. (A tiny portion of that business was also
picked up by three small carriers - Evergreen international, Frontier
Airlines and Mesa - that now ship cargo into Reno but didn't a year
ago.)  

That again is a sign of growth in the region. The smaller, regional
carriers fly turbo prop planes while the FedEx's of the world fly jets.
Empire Airline, for example, once was a subcontractor for FedEx when
Reno was considered a secondary market. Now Empire's turbo prop planes
are gone and FedEx's jets are flying in.


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