urbanSTL

Just had a nice breakfast with 2 people who went to China with Fleming and group a few weeks ago.

A couple things:
1) Bonwich is correct. Mr. Sauget in Illinois is a fly in the ointment, going over there on his own to get China to locate their cargo hub in Illinois.

2) Besides that, though, this hub is between San Francisco and St. Louis. And San Fran is taking it for granted, not really working hard to woo the Chinese.

These two seem fairly optimistic.

The Central Scrutinizer wrote:

gary kreie wrote:We will eventually need to think differently in this country to compete with China Inc. We have this view of capitalism that holds it is OK for big corporations (like Walmart) to drive small businesses into bankruptcy, because it is survival of the fittest, and we all benefit from lower prices due to improved efficiency of the larger corporations.

Aside from again repeating the nonsense about Walmart, you're saying we don't benefit from lower prices as a result of improved efficiency? I sure do.

No, I'm saying just the opposite. The bigger corporations are more efficient and we benefit from lower prices while driving smaller business to bankruptcy. Now even bigger corporations -- called countries -- (China) are driving what used to be our large corporations toward bankruptcy. We buy from China because we "benefit from lower prices as a result of improved efficiency". But eventually, nobody in this country will have a job if this continues. Unless we start thinking like America Inc. and start competing on even terms.

While we are ensuring competition internally in the US, Europe, is forgetting internal competition in the airliner industry, for instance, and instead subsidizing Airbus to take the airliner industry away from the U.S.. (The U.S. did some of its own subsidizing of Boeing as result, but nothing on Europe's scale.) And when China decides they want to own the airliner industry, they will make European subsidies look like sofa change.

To think like America Inc., we need to do things a giant corporation might do -- like standardize and consolidate overhead costs, such as health care. China and Europe consolidate healthcare overhead at the country level, whereas we have thousands of little inefficient healthcare plans that we require individual corporations to absorb. You could call it communism with a small c, or think of it as the ultimate capitalist corporation. America, Inc. But with democratic principles and basic human rights.

Now Nashville is making a late, back-door move.

sirshankalot wrote:Now Nashville is making a late, back-door move.

Where did you here this from?
Sources?

A couple clients of mine own nice-sized businesses in the Earth City area and they are in constant contact with Fleming and crew.

sirshankalot wrote:A couple clients of mine own nice-sized businesses in the Earth City area and they are in constant contact with Fleming and crew.

So what does that mean for St. Louis?
Are we in trouble?

don't know.

How good of a case can Nashville make relative to St. Louis?

China Airlines just ceased cargo operations at BNA in July of 2009 (according to wiki). I know wiki isn't really the best source, but if they just dropped it a little over a year ago, I doubt they'll suddenly go back. If anything, I think Sir Shankalot's clients misheard something about the former flights that China Airlines once had to Nashville.

But this brings up an interesting point. If Nashville could fill 6 planes a week, so can we.

What does Nashville offer that St. Louis does not? And wouldn't jumping in two years into St. Louis' negotiations put them at a disadvantage?

STLCardsBlues1989 wrote:What does Nashville offer that St. Louis does not? And wouldn't jumping in two years into St. Louis' negotiations put them at a disadvantage?

Nashville has a huge Nissan auto manufacturing plant, but even that wouldn't fill up the cargo planes to Taiwan. Most of the suppliers for Nissan are located in the US and Canada.

matguy70 wrote:Ok - there is nothing online about this in newreels.

Let's keep this focused - until it is "official" that some other city is looking to land this deal and is serious - the hearsay can stay offline.

Easy there, tiger. This is an open discussion. It's not as if any conversation on here will change the outcome.

Suburban Journals article
http://suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/ar ... rport0.txt

Oct 8th article
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kwmu/ ... .elections

STLCardsBlues1989 wrote:Suburban Journals article
http://suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/ar ... rport0.txt

relevant part:

SB: Lambert is not popular with many people whose lives were uprooted when the new runway was built. It is still regarded as a boondoggle by many people. Is there anything you can say to these people?

RH: I understand their feelings. However, that new runway is our greatest asset for bringing in cargo flights. That is what attracts the Chinese to using St. Louis as a cargo hub. If you compare us with O'Hare International in Chicago, it would make more sense for them to go there because Chicago has everything a corporation needs in one place. However, there is one thing - O'Hare is at full runway capacity. The Chinese think our runway capacity is just amazing. Without the new runway, it would be hard to sell the hub. Any business that it can bring in is good.

Thought she gave a frank and realistic assessment of where Lambert is and where it needs to go at the same time being politically correct in discussing issues between City and County. Nothing more and nothing less.

My frank but very opinionated comment, Listen to her on the reality that hub status is not going to happen. Second, Air Cargo Hub idea is the one opportunity or chance to utilize the excess runway capacity. Yes, new runway is a blessing and curse. Third, time to downsize and demolish D. Third, a joint city-county and METRO! ownership should be the minimum. Why Metro, Because they have funding in place for capital project and I would much rather see major infrasctructure work from tearing down D, building a consolidated rental facility to redoing the metrolink stations before adding another short stubbed metrolink line in the county.

Good info about other cities here

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/prin ... -indy.html

I had to find the rest of the article online. This makes me think St. Louis arrived to the game too late. We should have been trying to attract cargo flights 20 years ago. Although I expect some pessimism from our competitors, one has to wonder if this plan is really logical.

Then again the Chinese are spending a lot of time and resources making trips from China for the last couple of years. Could they just be leading us on? It does seem like the process is beginning to become really stretched out.
I still feel we have a chance of landing this thing, but it may be less than 50/50.

I can't read the article, but I don't believe that two years of negotiations would be thrown out the window without any reward from it.

But this is St. Louis, so something probably will go wrong.

Interesting article
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/prin ... boxes.html

Interesting educational approach
http://media.www.webujournal.com/media/ ... 4632.shtml