Credit Herald

Ten days ago, a group of local leaders flew to Beijing, hoping to get a Chinese airline or two to think seriously about launching cargo flights to St. Louis.

When they flew back Saturday, they had deals in hand with four of them.

Not deals for flights. Not yet. But agreements to partner with Lambert-St. Louis International Airport on in-depth studies to see if those flights would make sense.

It’s a significant step forward in the region’s two-year-long bid to turn Lambert into a hub for air freight flying between China and the Midwest, said St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, who led the delegation.

"It was very encouraging," Slay said. "Though there’s still a lot of work to do."

Now officials at Lambert and the Midwest China Hub Commission will start crunching numbers with four Chinese air carriers — Air China, China Eastern, Jade Cargo International and Hainan Airlines — as well as with China’s aviation administration, to see if cargo flights between here and there are economically feasible.

The St. Louis-area leaders behind the effort are still trying to determine that for themselves. The main question is whether there’s enough demand for Midwestern-made goods to fly back to China. That’s key to creating jobs here, and to attracting high-value cargo to St. Louis, rather than the passenger hubs like Chicago, where much of it now flies in the bellies of passenger jets.

Forging stronger trade ties in the Midwest is a goal of China’s, and its government thinks St. Louis could be a good base from which to do that.

"We support this route and hope that it can be successful," said Xia Xinghua, vice minister of China’s Civilian Aviation Administration, in a statement issued by the Hub Commission bad credit pay day loans. "The time is right, as our vice premier said in St. Louis, to open up the central U.S. to Chinese companies and airlines."

Getting those airlines involved now will help speed the study process, said Hub Commission co-chair Mike Jones, and it could help draw the interest of freight forwarders, the crucial players who transport cargo once it’s on the ground.

"We now have all the key participants in a discussion with each other about under what circumstances they’ll do business," he said.

Those discussions will take place over the next several months, and Jones said he hoped to have at least "a framework for a deal" that could bring Chinese cargo planes to Lambert by the end of the year. At the same time, the Hub Commission and the Regional Chamber and Growth Association are pitching Chinese companies on the prospect of investing in St. Louis, and creating jobs here around a cargo hub. That will likely lead to more trade delegations down the road, Jones said.

The process is long and slow, but this sort of relationship-building is important if the project is to succeed, said Stephen Perry, a British Chinese trade expert who’s been advising the St. Louis effort.

"Meeting with airlines this time and their interest in it signifies that the concept seems to be being taken seriously by the Chinese," he said. "It’s pretty exciting stuff."

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