Airports II: Others Want Your Business

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Even if Santa Monica would like to see all the bizjets go somewhere else, other cities and airports around the country are going all out to attract them, whether flown as charters, fractional operations or traditional flight departments. For example, traffic at the Portland-Hillsboro Airport (HIO) in Portland, Ore., is expected to increase by nearly 30 percent in the next two decades, according to an article in the The Business Journal of Portland. The newspaper reported that a significant proportion of more than 254,000 operations at the facility in 2003 were for business reasons. That number is forecast to increase to 323,000 by 2020. “The airport is growing rapidly and it has been that way for the last few years. It is a microcosm of the growth of Washington County businesses,” Daren Griffin, Port of Portland general aviation manager, told the newspaper. Meanwhile, management at the Lebanon (N.H.) Municipal Airport (LEB) welcomes what it says is about a 10-percent increase in business aviation activity over the past year. According to The Associated Press, an increase in fractional operations has greatly contributed to LEBs recent growth. Greg Soho, chief executive officer at LEB FBO Signal Aviation Services Inc., told the AP its fuel sales were on track to show a 5-percent increase in 2004 over 2003.

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