This week's Portland Business Journal includes an excerpt of a conversation between Daimler Trucks North America COO Roger Nielsen and the Charlotte Businesss Journal which underscored to me the critical importance of achieving more frequent and non-stop air service to Portland's viability as a business center.
Despite being founded in Portland and a long history in the Portland area, the company has relocated several hundred positions to Fort Mill, SC in recent years. In response to a question about the benefits of now having the administrative arm of Daimler Trucks in the Charlotte area and close to four major plants, COO Roger Nielsen shared this:
One of the reasons we located in Charlotte was it's not only our manufacturing base, it's also a nice place to be headquartered for our customer base and our supplier base. Eighty percent of customers and 80 percent of our suppliers are east of the Mississippi. When you think about that, it's nice having our customer-facing staff here in Fort Mill. It's much more convenient.
We've found that as the airlines started cutting back on service and started loading up planes, it was difficult for our sales and marketing people and our service people being headquartered in Portland to work with our customers all week, fly home on a Friday night and get home to Portland by midnight. (emphasis added)
Now I am able to get a flight out at 7:30 to Indianapolis, get to the supplier at 10, stay with the supplier until 5 in the afternoon and be back home and I grilled steaks at 8:30 last night in Waxhaw.
While Portland will never be as close to the east coast as Charlotte is, limited non-stop options to and from PDX only amplify the competitive disadvantage of being based in Portland compared to regions with stronger air service.
Based on our research, PDX currently has non-stop service to 27 of the top 50 airports in the US (PDX is ranked #30 based on 2009 passenger volume). Download PDX_nonstop_service_to_top_50_US_airports (as of October 15, 2010).
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