Alaska adds another Amazon HQ2 city to its network

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Air service as HQ2 bellwether: Alaska Airlines on Wednesday announced they will launch new flights from Seattle to Columbus, Ohio starting in March. The Buckeye state’s tech-friendly capital city is on the short list for Amazon’s HQ2. Non-stop daily flights to Seattle (as well as New York, San Francisco/Bay Area, and Washington, D.C) was a requisite for any bidding city. This isn’t the first city on the list of 20 to get a new connection to Amazon’s home port. Pittsburgh wooed Alaska earlier in the year last November to a flight as part of its own bid.

Amazon’s promise of 50,000 jobs for HQ2 is not only a potential boon for the winning city, but its region’s airports. Amazon shot up the rankings as a top buyer of corporate travel, now the 19th largest in the U.S. The company didn’t crack the top 100 five years ago and it’s one very big reason Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is busting at the seams. – J.O.

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Jon Ostrower
Jon Ostrower is Editor-in-chief of The Air Current, where he leads coverage of the global aerospace and aviation industries. Prior to launching TAC in June 2018, Mr. Ostrower served as Aviation Editor for CNN Worldwide, guiding the network’s global coverage of the business and operations of aviation. Mr. Ostrower joined CNN in 2016 following four and a half years at the Wall Street Journal. Based first in Chicago and then in Washington, D.C., he covered Boeing, aviation safety, and the business of global aerospace. Before that, Mr. Ostrower was editor of FlightBlogger for Flightglobal and Flight International Magazine covering the development of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and other new aircraft programs from 2007 to 2012. He is also an instructor at the University of Southern California in the Viterbi School of Engineering's Aviation Safety and Security program. Mr. Ostrower, a Boston native, graduated from The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs with a bachelor’s degree in Political Communication. He is based in Seattle.
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