Blogging from Beijing Part II

Thursday, April 22 - 11:15 pm
Attendance at the Airport Cities has revealed to me an important insight into the value of our airport in Memphis. While I have appreciated the work of the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority under the leadership of President Larry Cox and Chairman Arnold Perl, it is my great privilege to gain a better understanding of the valuable asset that has been carefully managed and developed over the years. Thankfully, our community has been provided with an opportunity to excel and compete. We cannot be complacent and must work hard to assure our efforts are strategic and aggressive. We have opportunity before us if we can seize it and maximize the potentials.

From Munich to Dubai to Mumbai to Denver to Dallas and all around the world, there is a staggering amount of current economic investment in airport infrastructure. China, for example, plans to building 50 new airports in the next ten years and renovate many of the 152 existing facilities. Investing billions of dollars in airports globally is driven by the 21st century reality that the new economic highways are the air routes globally and domestically. Like the clipper ships of bygone days, world commerce occurs when airplanes have sustainable and efficient access to those air routes to carry business people, tourists, and goods effectively and efficiently. Vital airports provide access to the economic highways and are the key generators of economic activity for the 21st century for local and regional economies. It is critical to understand the concept of the entire regional economy revolving around the ingress and egress to the new economic highways. The new economic highways offer access and opportunities to expand and grow tourism, biosciences, medical care and research, conventions, education, research, logistics, corporate business operations, headquarters, and manufacturing.

Memphis is a current thought leader and participant as a global access airport. With hub status for the largest global airline, Delta; one of three global Aerotropolis hubs for FedEx, an UPS freight hub, Memphis’ airport impacts the daily lives of people and commerce across the region well beyond the land inside the fences at Memphis International Airport. Further with our Aerotropolis initiative of leveraging Memphis’s multi-modal transportation infrastructure (river, rail, road, runway), the future is bright if the community can comprehend the opportunity and make certain there is a laser focus on the airport’s importance and continued investment is made not only on the airport facilities but other vital infrastructure components.