There is a major growth opportunity for the Northwest area of Mississippi. This opportunity is to establish an international airport in north Panola and southern Tate counties. An airport of this type is greatly needed by north Mississippi, southwest Tennessee and eastern Arkansas.
The benefits of this development are as follows:

1. The land is not in a flood plain and is reasonably priced. Also, the area is not highly developed, thus it would not be a source of noise pollution to housing areas. (For example, when the noise regulations were passed, houses on Airways near the Memphis airport were demolished to comply with the new regulations.)

2. Memphis would welcome the new facility because travel to Memphis would cost less traveling by air. This cost for cheaper plane tickets is needed because landing fees of most airports are lower than Memphis International. This high cost is because of the high landing needs of Federal Express.

Currently, many fly into Little Rock and rent a car to travel to Memphis. This cost less than traveling to Memphis. With this lower cost to travel to Memphis, many more tourists, business travelers and family travelers would come to Memphis. Keep in mind the travel to Memphis because of lower landing fees would increase industry and business activity and this activity would spill over into north Mississippi when the new airport is built.

3. The economic gains for Memphis would also apply to northwest Mississippi.

A. The airport would aid the revival of the Tunica area by bringing tourists, gamblers, fishermen and industrial development.

B. The airport’s location to Interstate 69 and Highway 61 would open up the Delta for manufacturing development. Most manufacturing operations require on occasion rapid delivery of repair parts and material for production. All industrial operations require upper management meetings at the production facilities. On occasion these meetings would be in Mississippi.
4. FedEx would approve of and help the development of this new airport because it would help them acquire additional land rights.

Also it would furnish them an emergency landing airport. The location of this Mississippi airport would not interfere with the existing landing pattern of the Memphis airport, because of the distance between the two airports.

5. Northeast Mississippi would also increase manufacturing because Northern companies will relocate. They will relocate South to take advantage of cheaper labor, land availability for prospective plant locations and ideal weather conditions year round. The weather will prevent missed days of production.

These locations provide to new industry junior colleges that will introduce programs that will fit their needs, i.e. airport maintenance, machine maintenance, machine programming, and operation of advanced equipment. Also with road improvement from Como to Oxford the total facilities and programs of a major university (Ole Miss) would be available to these new companies.

6. The federal government is looking for programs of this type that would add to the employment numbers and the country’s production. A selling feature of this program is that it has a very short payback period. The payback funds would come from individual income tax and business income.

I hope this project will be interesting to the Mississippi government representatives and they will lead to the fulfillment of the project. Governor Bryant and Mississippi Development Authority, please join on the implementation of this project.

John O. Greene