From Port to Portland

Representatives scope out Oregon city's airport, light rail, downtown

PORTLAND, Ore. — Several Moses Lake denizens brought sunny weather with them when they made the trek to this city Tuesday.

During the all-day trip, the Moses Lake representatives heard from representatives from the Portland International Airport and the Portland Oregon Visitors Association about the city and airport's offerings to Moses Lake travelers.

The trip was hosted by Big Sky Airlines and the Port of Portland to promote awareness of the new flight out of Moses Lake to Portland. Big Sky ceased offering flights from Moses Lake to Seattle earlier this month, and began offering flights to Portland and to Boise, Idaho.

Lynette Goodman, manager of marketing programs and services for Big Sky, said the trip's purpose was to familiarize a representative sampling of Moses Lake that would have the need to travel to Portland with the airport, ease of travel, ease of connection to Horizon's shuttle, resources for conferences and meetings and opportunities for leisure, amongst other offerings.

Janie Pe-a Hansen, senior passenger marketing manager in North America for the Portland International Airport, said that the airport relies heavily on traffic from the region to feed it. There's not enough just with the local marketplace, she said, so Moses Lake will help bring in travelers from the region that can then carry on to other points in the United States through other carriers.

"We also hope that perhaps we can grow that service with Moses Lake," she said. "We've told them that we're interested in that, that once we get this service up and going, we'd like to see them expand here, perhaps into Oregon or maybe additional points in Washington, feeding through (the airport) and beyond."

For $65, a Moses Lake resident can purchase a one-way flight to Portland and can, for the first six months of the new service, connect to Seattle through the Portland airport's Horizon Air shuttle to that city, which takes place every 30 minutes.

Moses Lake residents also got to see the length of the trip from the airport to downtown Portland using the city's TriMet MAX redline light rail system, and tour and sightsee through some of the downtown attractions, including the Classical Chinese Gardens and Pioneer Courthouse Square.

"It means people coming into Portland," said Michael C. Smith, vice president of sales for the Portland-Oregon Visitors Association (POVA) of the new flight in from Moses Lake. "For us, it's a new market, either individual or with smaller groups. Portland is a city that recognizes the value of the visitor. We had $1.2 million worth of visitor traffic last year, and we'd like to increase that. This is just another new avenue and target for us, if you will."

Moses Lake would hopefully benefit from people flying back from Portland, Smith said, and generate greater visibility.

"One of the things we see happening is that city councils or chambers of commerce from other areas will visit Portland to see how we're doing it, whatever 'it' may be, and … we send our people out to other cities to see how they're doing their infrastructure, etc.," he said. "There's really some nice cross-breeding of good ideas back and forth."

While no ideas have been finalized, Smith said POVA began the process of looking at Moses Lake when the Port of Portland called and "said, 'Hey, guess what's flying into Portland now?'" Usually the Port creates new services into Portland, allowing POVA to ultimately get on board with its marketing efforts, he noted.

"As a convention bureau, we're primarily interested with the in-bound flight, because we like people to come in, stay at our hotels, etc.," Smith said. "But we recognize that we've got a partner on the other end of that airline who's interested in the same things we are. They want the traffic from Portland headed that way. So a lot of times we will team up and do some cross-marketing efforts, so it works very well."

"Everybody seemed very enthused, responsive, very impressed with the light rail and how easy it was to get downtown from the airport," Goodman said. "We just hope everybody in Moses Lake takes that opportunity to get over to Portland via Big Sky and take advantage of what Portland has to offer, be it for business or pleasure."

Grant County PUD frequently has people heading to Portland to meet with different agencies, so administrative assistant Julie Yount was sent to check out transportation from the airport, conference facility options and the most economical way to get pertinent meetings accomplished.

"I think it's wonderful, very convenient and I can't think of how it could be any simpler," Yount said. "I think it's going to be a really positive change to have the direct flights, and make it simple for folks to not have to have travel time to another town in order to take a flight to layover, and then … it just makes things easy."

Joy Ricks, executive assistant to the president with Big Bend Community College, said she was asked to see the ease of transferring to the Seattle flight. Most of the BBCC staff end up going to Seattle, while president Bill Bonaudi often travels to Olympia, she noted.

"This was to see how smooth that would be, and it looks like it's going to be, because the Horizon gates are right next to Big Sky, so that's just going to be a natural cutover," she said. "We'll see, too, how quick it will be to drive up to Olympia versus flying to Seattle and driving down."

Ricks said she found the airport user-friendly and easy to get around in.

Personally, Ricks said she did not know that she would be in a big hurry to go back to Portland, calling herself a small-town person, but she said someday in the future she may venture with her daughters and "do a MAX trip or something like that."

Kazuo Noda, Japan Airlines senior director of the flight crew training center, and Yoshitaka Goto, JAL chief maintenance engineer, said they were on the trip to see what kind of travel it will require to bring training center trainees from Japan.

"A trainee will come from Japan to Vancouver, Portland, then Moses Lake because of the trip," Noda said. "We need to know this town."

In winter time, the Vancouver to Japan departure time is quite early, Noda said.

"Now we cannot connect because of this Portland-Vancouver to Narita in one day," he said, noting that it will take two days, although in the summer time, it may be all right.