An air cargo carrier is expressing tentative interest in landing planes at Prince George Airport, according to the facility's CEO John Gibson.
If all works out there will be a test flight this summer ramping up to a weekly service by sometime next year, Gibson said Thursday.
The carrier would land in Prince George to refuel while flying from Asia to the United States and heading back, would stop at the airport once more to pick up freight to deliver to the other side of the Pacific.
"Although it's a little bit of a tech [refueling] stop, it also serves us operationally because they can offload their empty pallets and we can load them up and when their plane comes back we can put them on," Gibson said.
Gibson declined to say which carrier is interested.
"I can't say too much because it's competitive," Gibson said. "The moment we start identifying who we're talking to and what we're putting on their airplane, airports bigger than us are going to be chasing the business or try to hold onto it."
One of the original reasons for extending the runway and putting in a refueling apron - a $36-million expense - was to provide a place to land for the "overspill" of flights unable to stop at Anchorage's airport because it was getting too busy.
But the Great Recession delivered a wallop to that business. Not long after the crisis hit in late 2008, flights worldwide fell by a third. Last year was the first in six to see an increase and it was by only 2.3 per cent.
Moreover, planes can simply fly farther, also lowering the number of flights landing in the Alaskan city. "They don't have the same capacity issues," Gibson said.
The Prince George Airport Authority board of directors has appointed an economic development committee and has also hired a consultant, Montreal-based Explorer Solutions, to put together an program over three phases in as many years.
"It has the manpower to do a lot more breadth, research and analysis than we do," Gibson said.
The first phase of coming up with ideas to run by the committee is to be completed this fall. From there, the proposals will be narrowed down and refined and then taken to the market in the final phase.
"[For example] if they recommend the aerospace industry, they would go out and might say 'cold-weather testing facilities for Prince George,'" Gibson said. "So they would go out and put together all the businesses that would do that and get them to sign on."
Gibson said the main runway will be due for $10-million worth of rehabilitation in five to 10 years. The extension was completed in late 2009.
"It wasn't completed that many years ago but it's just at an average level of repair," Gibson told Fraser-Fort George Regional District directors during a presentation Thursday. "The time goes by fast and the winters are harsh on them."
