Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Andrew Adams and Lori Prichard reportingFrom the "City of Lights" to Salt Lake City, the first, nonstop flight from Paris landed at Salt Lake International this afternoon. The first direct flight from Salt Lake City to Paris took off at 5 p.m.
The inaugural flight landed a little after 1 p.m. The flight took 10 hours 15 minutes. The flight captain, Larry Foster, said people on board were pretty happy because they didn't have to go through any layovers at any other airport. Foster said, "Most of the passengers were very, very happy, or perhaps all of them. I didn't hear any bad comments at all. They seemed to enjoy the flight a lot."
Salt Lake will be the only city in the West with nonstop service to Paris, and the Governor's Office of Economic Development has lofty aspirations. "This is going to be a starting point for us to show the rest of the world what we're like," said Executive Director Jason Perry.
He tells KSL the idea is to develop the airport into an international hub. "We're going to show them why they should be here, not just for the tourist destinations, but for business as well," he said.
One of the primary beneficiaries of this flight is the skiing industry. Perry's already hearing from people overseas that this flight will make Utah their primary destination for skiing.
Thanks to the new direct flight, Paris is now much closer for many French natives who now call Utah home. J.J. Grossi works at Gourmandise, the bakery. He came to Utah 30 years ago. He said, "When I moved here, I never thought we'd have a flight like this."
He said back then, nobody had heard of Salt Lake City. But after the 2002 Winter Olympics, visibility has grown. "More and more, when I go to France now and say I'm from Salt Lake City, [people say] ‘Oh, wow. The Utah Jazz.' They know about the Utah Jazz. Now, they are familiar with this."
Grossi says the nonstop flight will help his mom. She struggles with the language barrier.
Officials say it's good news for the estimated 1500 French that live here.
All this week listen to KSL Newsradio for exclusive reports from Andrew Adams, who will be the only Utah news reporter on the Paris flight.
E-mail: aadams@ksl.com
E-mail: lprichard@ksl.com
