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Airport runway extension wasn't enough Lottery will pay for study of how long a new extension needs to be By DAVID PRESZLER Pavement has yet to be laid for Jackson County airport's $15 million runway extension, but officials are already looking into making the runway even longer. The airport will get $50,000 in state lottery money to study how much longer the runway would need to be to accommodate fully loaded large cargo planes arriving directly from South Korea and elsewhere. When completed this fall, the current extension will lengthen the runway to 8,800 feet. That will make it possible for large cargo planes to land at Rogue Valley International Airport's foreign trade zone. But for heavy, fully loaded, nonstop flights between Medford and the Far East, a longer runway is likely needed, officials say. What they don't know is how much longer. "We know that 8,800 feet will allow us to begin the marketing for the free trade zone but it is the minimum," says Ralph Wehinger. He is president of Ore-Cal Trade Co., the company contracted by the county to develop the zone. "We're not sure what the optimum level is but we know that it will be beyond 8,800." The $50,000 will pay for an engineering study to determine just how much longer the runway needs to be. The additional length is expected to be much shorter than the 2,200 feet now being added. Bern Case, the airport director, says the push to do the study now came after Medford, county and economic development officials went on a trade mission to South Korea last fall. They returned with a sense that a longer runway could open the door to nonstop flights from Korea that would be a boon to Jackson County's economy. Case says the runway won't be extended further unless it makes economic sense. The $50,000 is the latest in a long line of government funds to flow into the project since 1991. About $120 million in federal, state and local funds already have been committed to build up the airport's capacity, Wehinger says. That money has been set aside or spent on items such as upgraded radar, the runway extension, access road improvements and U.S. Customs facilities. The project's premise is that expanding the airport's capacity and developing the foreign trade zone will attract cargo traffic from crowded West Coast airports such as Portland and Seattle. It's hard to tell how successful the effort has been. Airport officials can only estimate how much cargo comes through the airport. Carriers such as Federal Express and Airborne Express don't have to report how full each plane is. Wehinger says you can get an idea of the cargo growth based on the number of planes landing each day, since a carrier is unlikely to add flights if planes aren't 80 to 90 percent full. Case says about 15 cargo planes land each day. He estimates the traffic has grown about 50 percent over the past five years. Another indicator is the number of facilities being built to handle cargo, Wehinger says. There are three today, and none a few years ago. "If there's enough movement that they are adding flights and building facilities," he says, "that means that it's growing." But that's domestic cargo. So far Wehinger says the only international flights have been private passenger planes. The project's real payoff won't begin until all-cargo flights arrive from overseas. The current extension is the first step toward making that happen. But Wehinger says it's hard to predict how soon it will take off. "We get asked that question every day," he says. "The answer is that we don't know when those first all-cargo planes will arrive." Fully developing the foreign trade zone was projected to take 15 to 20 years, Wehinger says. Despite the wait, he says, it's actually ahead of schedule. "This is a long-term project," he says. "You can't build these kind of facilities overnight." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA