JWA Cargo Falls By 21% in March
By CHRIS CZIBORR
John Wayne Airport’s cargo business still hasn’t recovered from the past year’s eaconomic slowdown and effects of Sept. 11.
Cargo moving in or out of the airport in March fell 20.8% to 1,170 tons, vs. a year ago. While cargo movement improved at Ontario International Airport in March, sources say the falloff at John Wayne Airport isn’t a result of business lost to Ontario or Los Angeles International Airport.
Los Angeles airport also showed a falloff in March, with cargo dropping 8.9% to 167,327 tons vs. March 2001.
Ontario showed a markedly different result, with cargo business rising 6.7% to 42,712 tons.
But Ontario’s improving cargo business didn’t all come at the expense of other Southland airports.
“The small package sector, which makes up a lot of Ontario’s business, has been rebounding,” said Barry Sedlik, chief executive of the World Trade Center Association of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
A big part of Ontario’s cargo increase was in mail, which jumped 209.1% to 2,818 tons.
And the Southland’s bulk cargo imports and exports have to go through customs at Los Angeles International, Sedlik said.
“So there is no diversion in terms of traffic to Ontario,” he said. “The larger international cargo, that all has to go through LAX, is still struggling to recover.”
Ontario’s mail and small cargo business, 70% of which is driven by United Parcel Service Inc., has benefited from the four UPS non-stop weekly flights to China that started a year ago.
“Those China flights are doing very well and are a big part of the increase,” said Ontario spokesman Dennis Watson. “Whatever happens with UPS affects our cargo numbers,the China flight is one of the things that has kept our cargo numbers up.”
John Wheeler, a spokesman for UPS at Ontario, said that UPS hasn’t cut flights to Los Angeles International or John Wayne airports, and that the China flights are the only ones the company has added to Ontario over the past year.
“It’s not a political matter for us in deciding where to set up flights,” Wheeler said. “We chose the Ontario facility for tactical reasons.”
He said the four weekly flights from Ontario and two from Newark International Airport in New Jersey to Beijing and Shanghai broke even in nine months.
“We expected it would take at least a year to break even with the China flights,” Wheeler said.
In the year since starting those flights, UPS’ annual revenue for China shipments has doubled to $200 million.
