The Advantage

Economic Impact Forum - Air Service Update held Friday..

About twenty five community and business leaders met with Gary Jackson, Executive Director of the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport Commission, on Friday to discuss how the community can support GSP as it continues the process of recruiting additional airlines, flights and destinations for its customers. With economic development projects sometimes hanging in the balance, enhanced air service should be a continual priority for the region.

The bottom line is that airlines need to feel reasonably comfortable that they can fill the seats in their planes. They have tremendous access to mountains of data and can crunch numbers better than almost anyone. However, they need to understand the culture of a community and the local drivers that will shape both population and economic growth into the future. If the community can convince the airlines that the Upstate is different than other communities and poised for strong, continued growth; if the community can convince them that the business and leisure markets will support the airlines, we stand a much greater shot of adding service to GSP.

We will be calling on Advantage Greenville members over the next several months to ask about air travel needs as well as to secure letters of support, encouraging various airlines to give Greenville serious consideration for their plans in 2010 and beyond.

We hope you will help us in this process of supporting Gary Jackson and the excellent staff at GSP.