American Flies Away; Tweed Seeks Replacement

How do over 3000 people answer the poll when the article has just posted?
Fuzzy math?

[Paul: It's cumulative over time. When we write about the subject we re-embed the poll from previous articles. If you've already voted it doesn't allow you to vote again.]

I've flown Tweed at various times to Chicago, Baltimore, and Philly...all were pleasant experiences for connections. I believe I alson went direct to Reagan/National twice in '86 or so.

I'd be very happy to see a Boston connection for European/Western US destinations, and Florida connections(Miami & Tampa) for Southern US/Caribbean destinations. Delta could get it done. I believe the demand is there, COVID-contingent.

Just want to say that it is fifty minutes from my front door to Bradley, where there are discount carriers and far more routes and choices.

Yes, it was great to be able to hop from Tweed, (twelve minutes), to American's Philadelphia hub. Super easy, and a cheap UBER. But often I would travel to Bradley anyway, for a cheaper fare or a more convenient flight time.

While I'm not a business traveler, and I realize Tweed was so quick through security, — is the extra 45 minutes each way that big a deal?

Delta please.

There is no real demand in NH. There is only the selfish push by Yale and the few folks who are too lazy to fly out of Bradley. We don't all have to pay in our health and peace of mind so you few can have it easy and convenient.

Also-- in light of the current situation; it would have been more fair to reset the poll to 0. People may feel differently now that CONN is economically down the crapper and higher taxes are looming with a Dem supermajority in Hartford.

By the time Tweed succeeds in establishing sustained service from a major carrier, humans will routinely travel by teleporting.

"Health and Peace." I live literally by the end of the runway. The commercial flights were only a few times a day. If you've properly set up your home, you barely notice the noise and they are almost entirely during the daytime. There are far more private jets that leave from Tweed and they leave at more annoying times (one departed near midnight last week). At the same time, people who move to Morris Cove are aware of the airport--it's why they get a good deal on the houses here and they should have to deal with it if they purchase. Where else can you get a remodeled house on the water for 400-500k or a remodeled house a few blocks inland in the 200s?

I believe they need to do an assessment for the wildlife (particularly the osprey population that lives in the wetlands) but the complaining Morris Cove property owners get no sympathy for me. You can't have your cake of low property prices and eat it too.

AverageTaxpayer - talk to any business, travel time was definitely an issue prior to the pandemic for people who had to travel more frequently . At rush hour, when many business travelers arrive, it could be a 90-120 minute drive to/from Hartford.

If you're in downtown DC, Boston, Indianapolis, Austin, Midtown Manhattan, Portland Oregon, , your airport is about 10-15 minutes away (if you're leaving at noon). New Haven just can't compete with that if it relies on Bradley and its 2 hour round trip, so companies will choose those other cities to do their business.

Having a couple flights at Tweed would easily support hundreds or thousands of new jobs in New Haven, including several new hotels. Prior to COVID the lack of an airport was especially a problem for hosting any meetings or conferences - high-output companies in New Haven have often had to hold their leadership meetings in NY or Boston. Holding a meeting in New Haven was just off the table, most of the time.

Tweed is just one of a number of airports around the country to which this has happened.
By NO means is this "proof" that "there's no market" here, not when 85% of New Haven County accounts for 15% of Bradley's market.
Having said that, let me say this: While Tweed will NOT be another Bradley, it will be a "niche" airport, with adequate service to a handful of "hub" airports (nowhere near the 30-flight limit mentioned in the now-vacated 2009 agreement) and Florida service (Allegiant? Breeze?), the latter having a significant pent-up demand.
Go Tweed!

@ CityYankee "There is no real demand in NH." Kind of a silly comment to make. Hartford has a market and New Haven does not? They are both similar in population and where do you think Bradley gets some of it's passengers? Right, New Haven. The reason for the service ending is the virus and nothing else. American also pulled out of Stewart airport in New York and other airports. Airlines have also cut many flights from Bradley and have substituted large aircraft for smaller ones.

Thank you Scriptus. I've been saying for years those few who rant about Tweed, which preceded them by many years did so because homes were cheaper. Like getting a home next to a school for a low price and then complaining about the kids making noise at recess, playing games during gym and the traffic from the parents dropping off and picking up the kids, or moving next to Walmart and then nag about the traffic and noise for a good part of the day.
I feel another airline will come to Tweed, before the virus Tweed's passenger count was rising every year. I just used Tweed in September and it makes travel easier, much shorter driving distance, a breeze going through the terminal and baggage pickup.

The airline industry has changed. Our region is not a viable market.

In today's Register there was a quote from an AA spokesperson:
"These flights were initially suspended in October as we waited for PSP support, but are not financially viable routes for the foreseeable future; thus, we made the difficult decision to cancel service to these markets indefinitely".

Translation:

Two fearless predictions (1) it is going to be a long time before Tweed finds a replacement for American and (2) in the meantime, Tweed will ask for more money from the city, The former is not the result of Tweed's acts or omissions. Air travel has plummeted as a result of the pandemic. Even when it abates, I suspect that teleconferences will replace a substantial part of business travel.

@ Claudia Bosch Quote, 'The airline industry has changed. Our region is not a viable market." How wrong you are. New Haven leaks about 90% of the traveling public to New York and Bradley airports. It's is the virus. Tweed flights were rising every year in passenger numbers, and all airports have suffered a large reduction in flights. There are hundreds upon hundreds of airliners parked in the southwest desert. It's the virus and nothing else.
On a recent flight out of Tweed, I got the last open seat out of 76 seats.
The runway issue is that at times flights had to be diverted to another airport due to weather conditions causing inbound passengers to be delayed in returning to New Haven and outbound passengers not having a plane to depart with. An upgraded runway will eliminate that problem.
There is great market in the metro New Haven area and Tweed is so much easier to arrive and depart from along with eliminating more hours of ground travel time and highway traffic problems.
Your translations 1-5 are just your musings on a subject you are greatly lacking in. You and CityYankee espouse the same type of rhetoric, making bold statements, but lacking knowledge of the subject.

Anonymous, at this very moment it would take 40 minutes to get from Grand Central to JFK. And while you can get from National to central DC very quickly, BWI and Dulles are a different story.

On the other, you can add San Diego to list of cities with close-in airports. I once walked from downtown from the airport (with minimal luggage).

It was a Breeze flying out of Tweed before COVID.

Over the last several decades my family members, myself and my friends flew out of Tweed whenever we could get a connecting flight or a direct route to Chicago or Milwaukee, the DC area, Florida and the West Coast, etc. Flying out of Tweed is so much easier and way more pleasant than driving to Bradley or NY/NJ to catch a flight. With the tremendous increase in development in New Haven, especially the new Neuroscience Center that is coming and the new Biotech development coming to Science Hill, the demand for a quicker and more convenient access to transportation will only increase. New Haven is the center of economic growth in CT, and post pandemic will probably be even more desirable. A tremendous influx of people have migrated here from NY during the pandemic and realized that they can work from home, and have a big house with a yard and water access instead of a studio apartment in NYC for the same price. I'm sure they'd much rather fly out of Tweed than drive the route to the NY/NJ airport. If you expanded the runways to accommodate the planes necessary for commercial airlines, you could more easily get planes flying to Florida, DC area, Chicago area, and perhaps the West Coast and Europe. The expansion of service would only help CT's economic growth post-pandemic, especially if regular shuttle buses connected you to the train station and a CT Transit Bus depot in New Haven.
Anyone who bought a home near Tweed after the airport was built has no right to complain. It's like complaining about the smell of cows and the roosters crowing out in the country when you bought next to a farm. You knew it was there before you bought there.
I do think that the approach from the west side through a residential neighborhood isn't ideal. If you approached from the east side, down Hemingway Ave/Coe Ave (which is more commercial,) then East Haven could take advantage of the traffic going to the airport with restaurants, coffee shops, car rentals, gas stations, etc.

Heather C, you make some good points, however, Tweed will never have international flights. Tweed has a good market for domestic service, but areas like New York and Boston have the population base to support international flights. Even Bradley cannot offer flights to Europe as the surrounding area is very lightly populated. Bradley has always been international in name only.
Time has to pass while the virus is a real situation that is now being dealt with. All airports are dealing with cutbacks as this pandemic dwarfs 9-11.

@ Anonymous — can we stick to facts and reality please?

You try to make a trip to Bradley into a 2hr ordeal, and that's just a lie. Traffic along the I-91 corridor flows just fine, even at rush hour. Instead of a 50 minute trip, maybe, just maybe, it morphs into 65 minutes.

And look, I like flying out of Tweed. I'm only pointing out that the service we just lost, connecting thru Philadelphia, was not significantly better than Bradley.

@ Leftoncharlie "It was a Breeze flying out of Tweed before COVID." Good one.
Breeze airways has put on hold it's starting date. Allegiant has said many times they want to serve Tweed. Their flights would not be daily, but their business model is to serve small cities with several flights weekly to Florida. My son lives near Roanoke, Va and Allegiant has been operating there for about 12-13 years, the flights do quite well and the Roanoke metro area is smaller than New Haven's.
Another possibility is United to Chicago. They recently started using a new 50 seat regional jet that can work off Tweed's present runway. When United served Tweed back in then 90's the planes used then were 737's with well over 100 seats. Those were too large for Tweed's market but now with a newly introduced next gen regional jet at 50 seats, that could be a good starter plane and if passenger volume increases, there are 65-76 seat planes that could also fit the local market.
@ Stylo "Delta please." Years back, Northwest airlines now merged with Delta tried twice to start service from Tweed to Detroit.They first planned to use a DC-9 and then a CRJ-100. Both would not work due to the limited runway that would cause weight restricted flights at times. The DC-9 would at times be limited to 47 out of 95 seats. The same problem caused United to end Chicago service after almost five years. Tweeds problem has always been the limited runway length although now some next gen regional jets can offer some service off the present runway. Time will tell what service Tweed will get.

Steve, minor correction. I, and many others, have flow direct from Bradley to Dublin, which is well-connected with other European cities. I hope to fly this route again once the pandemic abates. Norwegian also had direct service, which was terminated in a tariff dispute.

@ Kevin McCarthy, thank you, I stand corrected. What I should have said is that the international service was very limited. Years back Northwest started flights to Amsterdam but when the seed money from the state ran out, so did Northwest. Connecticut is fortunate to have JFK and Logan at the ends of the state. They both especially JFK have the best international service on the east coast.

It takes much less time to drive 40min to Bradley and fly to your destination than it does to drive 10min to Tweed, fly 1:15min to Philly, wait probably at least 40min for a transfer and then fly to your destination. Sure Bradley is limited to NW and AA hubs, but that's a lot of places.

The flight from Bradley to Shiphol by Northwest (KLM) ended, not because of CT not supporting them anymore. It was booked up to 80 % - thus profitable. Delta and Northwest joined. The management decided too many flights heading to Europe by the new combined carrier. So, in-house competition was reduced. Knowing that people from CT or western MA, VT would drive to JKF, Logan or else, they could cut these flights. Unfortunately. We loved it.

If smaller airplanes are flying successfully and with no end in sight out of other airports, why has Tweed not attracted them yet? Runway limitations do not count for these smaller planes. It is the not viable market. I take the statement of the AA spokeswoman over Steve's opinion any day.

@ Claudia Bosch "The flight from Bradley to Shiphol by Northwest (KLM) ended, not because of CT not supporting them anymore. It was booked up to 80 %" Load factors are only one part of of the profit picture. Yields or price per ticket is what airlines look for. Years back Eastern Airlines tried to come out of chapter 11 and ran 139.00 R/T fares and the flights were full. Less than two years later they closed for good.
The state had provided funding for the flights and yet NW left town. Had the yields been good they would have stayed, merger or not.
Bradley does not have the population base and with JFK and Logan being close to much of the states population and offering a wide range of airlines and N/S destinations, Bradley is not competitive with these airports and will never be.
"If smaller airplanes are flying successfully and with no end in sight out of other airports, why has Tweed not attracted them yet?" The smaller planes are taking the place of larger or mainline planes due to reduced demand.Before Covid, American was flying large planes from Bradley to Philadelphia daily. During the summer, service was reduced to two 50 seat flights five days a week. Many of the larger planes were parked and smaller planes were in much greater demand. Many of these planes were assigned to Bradley and Providence.
Airlines are losing money at all airports and with Tweed having just a single route, it became the obvious choice along with other small airports. Before the virus, Tweed had year after year of rising passenger numbers and twice had increased the size of the planes, 50 seats to 65 seats and then to 76 seats.
What many don't know is that pilots have a scope clause in their contracts that limits the numbers of smaller planes. that's done to protect the mainline pilots from layoffs. Airlines would like to add more smaller planes but legally cannot. AA spokeswoman is just that, a PR person, not one who is involved in day to day operations. They read prepared script.

@ANONYMOUS
your quote:
"If you're in downtown DC, Boston, Indianapolis, Austin, Midtown Manhattan, Portland Oregon, , your airport is about 10-15 minutes away (if you're leaving at noon). New Haven just can't compete with that..."

Your absolutely right, NH can't compete with these huge cities. Comparing New Haven to any of these cities is ridiculous and gives more credence to the reasoning that Tweed will never have the market that justifies their desired expansion. Thanks for pointing that out.

It's so unfortunate that there are far fewer air travel options now than in the past. I remember the 1960s and 70s when family visiting from south Florida would fly on Eastern 727s and DC9s into and out of Tweed, usually connecting in DC as I recall. Then in the early to mid 1980s it was relatively easy for me to fly Pilgrim or New Haven Airways to Kennedy or LaGuardia to connect to DC, or Orlando. I miss those days. I flew Delta to Cincinnati once in 2004 and it was convenient but I found that 40 passenger CRJ to be cramped. If commercial jet service ever returns to HVN I hope on the longer routes at least that larger aircraft such as A319s, A220s, or 737s can be used. I was always a little wary of flying American when they served Tweed since I knew of so many people who had flights canceled repeatedly.

@Brian V Quote "" @ANONYMOUS your quote:"If you're in downtown DC, Boston, Indianapolis, Austin, Midtown Manhattan, Portland Oregon, , your airport is about 10-15 minutes away (if you're leaving at noon). New Haven just can't compete with that…"
Your absolutely right, NH can't compete with these huge cities. your quote:"If you're in downtown DC, Boston, Indianapolis, Austin, Midtown Manhattan, Portland Oregon, , your airport is about 10-15 minutes away (if you're leaving at noon). New Haven just can't compete with that. Your absolutely right, NH can't compete with these huge cities."

What ANONYMOUS was referring to was the distance from the airport to the city center, not comparing New Haven to these markets. Some say New Haven has no market for air travel and yet Hartford does. That makes no sense as both metro areas are close in population. With only one airline, Tweed would only attract one group of flyers. Passenger totals for Tweed in 2017 were 28,662, 2018 39,030 and 2019 50,355. If Tweed had Delta or United, those numbers would be double.
The numbers don't lie, given a choice, many would use Tweed as it is closer and easier to arrive and depart from. Looking at Bradley on a map, it becomes evident it cannot serve the entire state. Providence and White Plains airports are closer to many state residents. Its just a case of logistics,and time and traffic spent on crowded roads.
The virus is the biggest issue facing all airports, they have had flights cut, airlines moving out and many people are just not flying. New Haven has good market and hopefully a good future.

"Comparing New Haven to any of these cities is ridiculous"

No, it's not. New Haven (city) seems small only because it's a Connecticut municipality - but in reality, it's part of a large urban area with an economy that is as large as that of many of the smaller European countries.

If you look at the number of workers who live within a short (30-60 minute) drive of Tweed-New Haven, you get numbers that are larger than you get for places like Austin, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, all cities that have nice mid-sized airports.

Or, think of the tech market. New Haven received $466,000,000 in NIH funding in 2018. Austin, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati received $91,000,000, $395,000,000, $169,000,000, and $195,000,000, respectively.

But the companies spinning out of that research in Austin, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati are much more likely to stay in and host their events in those cities, because those cities have an airport.

Adding even a couple flights to Tweed would support thousands of jobs in New Haven. If you're retired or already have a job, maybe you don't care, though!