Can the Triangle support a nonstop flight to China? RDU thinks so.
Raleigh News&Observer, February 18, 2018
Just six years ago, Raleigh-Durham International Airport was still worried about maintaining regular nonstop flights to the West Coast.
Now RDU has set it sights a little farther. Airport officials say they think the growing business, educational and cultural connections between the Triangle and China will entice an airline to establish a more than 7,000-mile nonstop flight over the Arctic from North Carolina to the other side of the world.
As a sign of its ambitions, RDU is hosting a symposium for business, university and government leaders on Tuesday aimed at building support for winning a nonstop flight from the Triangle to China.
“RDU already has a strong traveler base to China, and our region has a solid Chinese business base,” said RDU spokeswoman Kristie VanAuken. “We can build on that synergy.”
The invitation-only symposium, at Duke University, will bring together about 100 state and local leaders, including Duke President Vincent Price, state Secretary of Transportation Jim Trogdon and state Commerce Secretary Tony Copeland. They’ll talk not only about the benefits of a nonstop flight, but also the obstacles to getting one and what the airport and leaders in the region can do to overcome them.
“An effort like this can take three to seven years,” VanAuken said. “And RDU cannot do it alone.”
Among the possible topics will be ways the Triangle could better accommodate Chinese visitors, both at the airport and in the community. In his weekly newspaper column, N.C. State University economist Mike Walden noted that a nonstop flight would make it easier for the growing number of Chinese tourists to get to the Triangle, but getting them to the beaches, mountains, golf courses and destinations in the state may take more planning.
“Chinese tourists are said to prefer vacation sites with clean air and safe conditions,” Walden wrote. “North Carolina certainly has these.”
China is one of several places the Triangle business community would like to be able to reach with a nonstop flight, said Joe Milazzo, executive director of the Regional Transportation Alliance, a business group associated with the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. Among the others is San Jose in Silicon Valley.
The likely customers for a nonstop flight to China include Lenovo, with dual headquarters in Morrisville and Beijing; Duke, with a campus outside Shanghai; and a growing number of businesses with Chinese ties, including Smithfield Foods, now a subsidiary of WH Group of China. Milazzo said RDU is constantly looking for opportunities to establish new air service, and airport officials have said there’s already healthy demand for travel between the Triangle and China. (RDU officials declined to provide numbers, saying they planned to make them part of their presentation on Tuesday.)
“They see this within the realm of possibility. Definitely not a slam dunk, but certainly not impossible either,” Milazzo said. “And the last time they told us they could get a new international flight, it worked out great,” referring to the daily Delta flight to Paris that began in 2016.