Atlanta airport and chamber officials met with airline representatives in Singapore and Dubai during the last two legs of a recent tour aimed at raising Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s international profile. 

Hartsfield is already the busiest airport in the world by passenger volume, and the airport is continuing to expand by building a new international terminal and trying to increase cargo volume coming through Atlanta.

In Singapore, Hartsfield officials met with Singapore Airlines Inc., which next month will become the first airline in the world to fly the Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world. 

But most of the aviation potential between Atlanta and Singapore exists in the cargo sector, Jeff Pearse, director of business development at the airport, told GlobalAtlanta.

“The air cargo side was more responsive than the passenger side.  The passenger side is limited by bilateral agreements and and aircraft availability,” said Mr. Pearse, who made a presentation to representatives from both the cargo and passenger divisions of the airline.

He added that bilateral agreements are less restrictive on the cargo side, but that the sheer distance between Atlanta and Singapore and the lack of available aircraft pose the greatest challenges for passenger flights. 

Singapore Airlines currently operates the longest nonstop passenger flight in the world to Newark, N.J.—18 hours—and “daily nonstop service to Atlanta isn’t necessarily feasible,” said Mr. Pearse.

“I was not going in there to pitch nonstop service because I knew the limitations of the aircraft and the staging lengths,” he said.

To address that concern, he and his colleagues aggressively marketed one-stop flights—both passenger and cargo—through European gateways, in hopes that a March 2008 Open Skies Agreement there will open doors for increased traffic.

The delegation, which included Bob Pertierra, vice president for logistics at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and Warren Jones, aviation development manager at Hartsfield, was not able to land any permanent agreements, but overall, it was an “absolute success,” Mr. Pearse said.

“Now we’ve got a reinvigorated relationship with them and I think it will lead to further discussion,” he added.

In Dubai, Mr. Pearse was taken aback by the astronomical amounts of capital investment he encountered. 

“It was sensory overload,” he said of the size and scope of construction projects and tourist sites there, which reminded him of a mix between Cancun, Mexico; Las Vegas and Shanghai, China.

Cashing in on a connection he made at the Air Freight Asia conference in Hong Kong, Mr. Pearse and the rest of the delegation were able to make an unplanned visit to the grounds of Dubai World Central, which he called a “gigantic intermodal logistics center” in the desert south of Dubai.

“They’re not mincing words.  They’re calling it Dubai World Central; they see it as a connecting point for the world,” Mr. Pearse said.

At its completion, the new six-runway airport will be able to handle 12 million metric tons of cargo per year, about four times more per year than Hong Kong International Airport, which he said is right now one of the top cargo airports in the world. 

In comparison, only about 750,000 metric tons of cargo came through Hartsfield in 2005, and Mr. Pearse said his trip came at an opportune time to focus on cargo.

The delegation met with representatives from Emirates Airlines Inc., which right now has flights to New York three times per week.

Although he said oil connections have Emirates Airlines planning to begin passenger service to Houston, all but excluding Atlanta from their consideration, the delegation did its best to open doors for future air cargo ties.

“Knowing that Delta is already in the market, we were really focused on the cargo side,” said Mr. Pearse, referring to Delta Air Lines Inc.’s nonstop service from Atlanta to Dubai four to five times weekly.  

Mr. Pearse didn’t rule out passenger traffic between the two cities, though. 

He mentioned the fact that Emirates Airlines has ordered 50 Airbus A380s, which he said cost about $300 million apiece.

“Anything’s possible with an airline that is essentially a flying bank,” he said.