Asian Pacific Americans have traveled far and wide — whether it’s television’s reality show star Yul Kwon, or NASA shuttle astronauts Sunita Williams and Mark Polansky. APAs made well over 33 million person-trips in 2002 and spent 13 percent more than the average traveler, according to The Minority Traveler. Two out of five trips were for family visits. Another one out of four traveled for entertainment and recreation, while one-fifth of travels were for business — part of a market segment that Air China’s general manager Zihang Chi was pitching for with his airline’s comfortable wider, first-class and business-class seating.
The competition is intense for the U.S.-China airline market. In recent months, four U.S. airlines have brought in economic and political giants like Wal-Mart and House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi to win a new direct U.S.-to-China route from decision-makers in Washington, D.C. Among the lobbying efforts — 400,000 messages to the U.S. Department of Transportation and even 5,000 fortune cookies for a route that could generate upwards of $150 million annually to the winning airline.
Asian Americans are even part of the pitch. In a letter for one bidding airline, New Jersey’s congressional delegation argued that the New York-New Jersey Asian American community is larger than that combined in Texas, Michigan and the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, Pelosi herself represents one of the most APA regions in the nation.
Whoever wins that coveted route — Continental, United, Northwest or American, one airline will undoubtedly contribute to transforming our community. Koreans, Vietnamese, Indians, Filipinos, Japanese and other nationalities are being transformed and developing a uniquely Asian American community.
And cycling back, Asian Americans are contributing back to Asian nations with their business sales, family remittances and brainpower like the doctorate Zihang Chi earned from MIT in the late 1980s before he became this nation’s highest-ranking airline executive immigrant from China.
While more travelers immigrate and become Asian Americans like Mr. Chi, increasing use of telecommuting through the information superhighway of cell phones, laptops and BlackBerries raises an intriguing thought: Asians and APAs from the comforts of their homes and offices will accelerate the continuous melding and re-melding of Asian, Pacific and American cultures and evolving into something uniquely Asian Pacific American.