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.
