What he said

Craig on the Niagara Falls International Airport:

As constantly pointed out by the airport’s boosters, Niagara Falls is the only place between Toronto and Rome, NY where the big planes can land. And with Toronto’s Pearson Airport ever-closer to high-use gridlock, the Falls facility could stands a chance to emerge as an important cargo hub. While I still can’t see much need for passenger 747 service here, developing wide-body freight shipments might really provide some economic spin-offs.

Damn straight! Done right, this could make our region, which has been an economic backwater for too long, a player again. A small player, perhaps, but a player. I’d love to see lots of cargo flights into and out of NFIA; I’d love to see warehousing facilities being built around there and more truck traffic to further disperse those goods. There’s a fancy word for stuff like that: commerce.

(Oh, and remember a few years back when the Powers That Be around here wanted to virtually sell that airport to a Spanish company? That deal got scuttled, thankfully. For some reason, that sounds familiar…selling control of a major transport facility, or a potential major transport facility, to a foreign entity…Hmmmm, I’m gonna have to think about that one for a while. I know I’ve read something like that recently, somewhere….)