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In an January 24, 2014 email exchange related a proposal, submitted by the professor at LB Airport's invitation, to conduct an Economic Impact Analysis of adding a federal inspection facility enabling international flights, Joseph Magaddino, Professor Emeritus in the CSULB Dept. of Economics, noted that his proposal deliberately leaves out the impact of new visitors on the Long Beach economy based on the reasoning below:

[Magaddino email to LGB, bracketed material by LBREPORT.com for clarity]...The main question appears to be the impact of new visitors on the Long Beach economy. Lisa [business partner/fellow economist] and I did discuss this question and we deliberately left it out of the proposal since we believe the impact of visitor expenditures on the Long Beach economy will be small.

Here is our reasoning:

The incremental impact on annual enplanements is 150,000.

These 150,000 enplanements include U.S. citizens travelling abroad and foreign nationals visiting Southern California.

We assume that the 150,000 passengers are likely to [be] classified, regardless of nation of origin, as leisure travelers.

We also assume that a disproportionately large number of these incremental passengers will be U.S. Citizens. These travelers live within the region and have little impact on expenditures beyond those within the airport facilities.

Foreign travelers are like to use the airport as entry into Southern California rather than visiting Long Beach per se. As for the JetBlue crews, who do have a sizable and important impact of local expenditures, this aspect was excluded since the proposal is to add foreign flights and to reduce domestic flights, This yields no net impact of crew expenditures.

Now, these assumption[s] may need to be re-evaluated if JetBlue is willing to provide data regarding the number and composition of incremental passengers.

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In response, then-Airport Director Mario Rodriguez told an Airport staffer that "he [Magaddino] needs to factor in the bilateral agreement that limits the number of slots from LAX and thus the pricing high and availability limited. So LGB is a good alternative for business travelers from both countries..."

Reached by cellphone for any updates on his views this morning (Feb. 17, 2015), Prof. Magaddino told LBREPORT.com that he hasn't done work on the matter other than that quoted above, doesn't recall having any specific discussions with JetBlue about the matter and absent receiving further documentation, his views stand as written.

In April 2014, LB Airport Director Mario Rodriguez announced he was exiting to run Indianapolis International Airport. LB City Manager Pat West has since hired a new LB Airport Manager, Bryant Francis, who began work in early 2015 after running the Shreveport [Louisiana] Airport Authority. He previously oversaw Palm Springs Airport during a period when it begin international flights.

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The Long Beach City Council is scheduled to hold a study session on LB's Airport ordinance this afternoon (Feb. 17) starting at 4:00 p.m. LBREPORT.com will provide LIVE video coverage on our front page (www.LBREPORT.com.)