Our View: Prosperous skies
The one current nonstop flight from Spokane to Los Angeles leaves bright and early – 6:30 a.m. on Alaska Airlines. In February, you can leave Spokane in a snowstorm and arrive in L.A. two hours and 38 minutes later in need of sunglasses.
But say you aren’t an early bird. Well, you can get to any of five L.A.-area airports later on many different airlines. But you’ll need to change planes, in Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Phoenix or Denver, and the trip will take you between four and eight hours.
The Inland Northwest’s quest to be a player in the world of commerce and tourism depends on people’s ability to get in and out of the region efficiently.
It once seemed the hallmark of jet-set sophistication to fly to a city for a meeting in the morning and fly home later that evening. But the appeal goes far beyond cool. It’s cheaper for companies to get their people to and from meetings in the same day because they save on hotel bills and expense-account meals.
Tourists benefit from nonstop flights, too. People coming this way to ski, hike, swim, hunt and fish appreciate flying to vacation destinations post haste. Time is money, true, but time is also fun.
A jet stream of good news for our region’s economy arrived this week when ExpressJet Airlines announced it will inaugurate two nonstop flights to Los Angeles/Ontario International Airport beginning in early April. Nonstops to Sacramento and San Diego are in the airline’s plans, too. The airline picked Spokane, officials said, because of its growing economy.
In April 2001, the economy was experiencing much turbulence. Regional business leaders mourned the end of United Airlines’ nonstop flights to San Francisco. The dot-com bubble had burst, and businesses were scaling back on travel. And then Sept. 11 happened, and hopes of reviving those Spokane-San Francisco direct flights disappeared.
Business leaders made the argument back then that direct flights from Spokane to California allow residents here to engage in the businesses that thrive in California – technology, arts and entertainment, and import-export endeavors. They couldn’t foresee in 2001 that within five years, the economy would rebound and Californians would discover the Inland Northwest as a resort destination and a place to invest in relatively inexpensive real estate.
Unfortunately, there still isn’t a direct flight to San Francisco. The closest you can get is Oakland on Southwest Airlines.
Airlines are always a tentative business, even in robust economic times. Delta and Northwest, two Spokane International Airport mainstays, are still working out of bankruptcy. An airline can offer a route that people clamor for, but there are no guarantees the passengers will fly those routes in sufficient numbers to keep them financially viable. Maui is a popular destination for winter-bound Inland Northwesterners, but direct flights from Spokane to Maui, offered by a charter airline, didn’t last long after being introduced in 2003.
ExpressJet is willing to give these new California nonstops a whirl. The company is banking on tourism and our growing economy, and on travelers eager to be part of both. Here’s hope for a smooth flight into the region’s future.