REDMOND – Central Oregon gained nonstop air access to one of the world’s largest economies, including a vast pool of potential tourists, when Horizon Air launched service between Redmond and Los Angeles on Tuesday.

While numerous businesses are welcoming the easier access to corporate offices and clients in Southern California, tourism promoters are salivating over their new access to 20 million people there with two daily flights between Redmond and Los Angeles International airports.

Nearly every one of the 74 seats on the first flight to and from Los Angeles was full Tuesday and Horizon Air is reporting that seats are more than 70 percent booked through August.

Michael Croel, of Los Angeles, brought his wife and two children north for a weeklong vacation.

”We’re going to get the kids outside and do some water-skiing; there’s a lot of stuff for the kids” to do, he said on the first flight from Los Angeles.

The Central Oregon Visitors Association hopes to see more tourists like the Croels.

COVA is spending $300,000 this year to market the region in Southern California, hoping to bring more California money into a tourism economy with an estimated annual economic impact of $500 million. California already is the No. 2 source of visitors to Central Oregon, evenly split between Northern and Southern California. Oregon is this region’s top tourist producer.

”Horizon asked for marketing support to help promote the route,” said Alana Audette, president and CEO of COVA. ”It’s part of our role to work with the airlines so that they’re flying full planes.”

COVA will buy advertisements placed in lifestyle-oriented publications such as AAA Westways, Sunset and Los Angeles magazines.

Sunriver Resort, meanwhile, plans to spend $60,000 this month to market the Central Oregon lifestyle and new flight to Southern Californians.

”We’ve targeted Southern California the last four years,” said Nancy Devine, vice president of sales and marketing. ”Guests (from Southern California) stay longer, spend more and are more enthralled with what Central Oregon has to offer because it’s quite the opposite of what they have in Southern California.”

Sunriver will partner with Horizon later this month to bring planners of large conferences and travel agency owners to Central Oregon to see what the region has to offer.

”This flight will help us attract leisure travelers as well as conference attendees,” Devine said. ”When you’re competing with other destinations in the country, accessibility is an issue.”

Chad Johnson, CEO of Ceramic Decorating Co. in Los Angeles, telecommutes from his Bend home to Los Angeles and travels there weekly – a journey that has taken approximately five hours flying through Portland, he said.

With a roughly 2 1/2-hour flight from Redmond to Los Angeles, he’s cut that trip in half, allowing him more time with his family. He’s already booked 20 round-trip flights, taking advantage of an introductory offer from Horizon through November.

”It’s shorter than some L.A. commutes,” Johnson said of the new Redmond flight. ”This is productive time that you can do work on the plane.”

Two retired couples, Mike and Phyllis Mar, and Kirk and Sherri Bashore, moved to Bend from Southern California to experience Central Oregon’s active lifestyle, but they left children and grandchildren behind in Newport Beach.

They said the new flight allows them to experience the best of both worlds.

J.R. and Karen Worrell, of La Pine, took the flight south as the first leg of their trip to Indianapolis.

”It’s a direct flight to Los Angeles, saving us a leg on the trip,” J.R. Worrell said.

On the flight from Los Angeles, Beverly Turner, of Palm Desert, Calif., was on her way to visit her children in Central Oregon.

The Mills family of Camarillo, Calif., was heading north to visit family, sightsee, golf and go whitewater rafting.

Passengers on the first flight into Redmond applauded the landing after a turbulent descent into Central Oregon.

COVA, meanwhile, cheered the new flights.

”This is tremendously significant,” COVA’s Audette said. ”The new flight gives us an entirely different ability to compete. All business in the region will benefit from improved access and air service to the critical L.A. market,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Roger Lee, executive director for Economic Development for Central Oregon, thinks it will give local businesses the opportunity to reach their customers as well as assist in recruitment efforts.

”For recruitment, this flight will remove a big mental obstacle because they can get here in a single connection,” he said.

He said that local businesses such as Columbia Aircraft Manufacturing, Les Schwab and Microsemi Corp. all have customers and/or connections to Southern California.

”For them, it’s huge, because they’re back and forth all the time,” he said, referring to Microsemi, based in Irvine, Calif. ”Business communication will become easier because business takes travel.”

Carrie Novick, Redmond Airport manager, said that overall boardings, or the number of outbound travelers, increased 21 percent in 2005 over 2004 to just short of 189,000. She projected this year’s boardings will rise 11 percent.

”This is very big for us,” she said. ”Many people who live in Central Oregon have business or family in Southern California.”

Novick does not expect the increased traffic at the airport to have negative impacts on customers.

”It won’t be slower,” she said. ”We still advise passengers to get to the airport an hour-and-a-half before departure.”

The airport opened another 200 parking spaces to accommodate the Los Angeles traffic. In addition, the federal Transportation Security Administration added another X-ray machine to expedite passenger check-in, Novick said.

The airport’s manager also expects the parking lot will be fully completed by October and the TSA will be adding new state-of-the-art security equipment that will ”speed up the operations dramatically,” she said.

Horizon uses 74-seat Q400s on the Los Angeles route. They have a top cruising speed of 400 mph, said Dan Russo, Horizon’s director of marketing and communications.

”We think it’s going to be a successful route for both business ties and vacation travel,” he said.