Thomas Breen photos
Unveiling Avelo's new nonstop routes at Tuesday's presser.
Avelo CEO Andrew Levy (center) with airport chief Scanlon and Avports CEO Roberts.
Tweed-New Haven Airport’s fast-paced expansion of daily flights continued, with the announcement Tuesday that Avelo Airlines will now fly nonstop to the hubs of Chicago and Washington, D.C. as well as Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
The announcement was made at a press conference held at the Morris Cove airport. (Click on the video below to watch the full presser.)
The new routes bring to 13 the number of U.S. airports to which Avelo will fly nonstop.
Avelo CEO Andrew Levy said that the budget airline will start flying from New Haven to Chicago, D.C., and Raleigh by the end of May.
“We do think that these routes in particular are going to be of interest” not just to leisure travelers, but also “to the business community,” Levy said while standing alongside a dozen local and state airport boosters.
Those boosters included Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon, Avports CEO Jorge Roberts, Mayor Justin Elicker, and state Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner David Lehman.
Those business-focused routes mark a departure from the six current nonstop flights that Avelo offers to various destinations in Florida, as well as from the four recently announced new routes to South Carolina, Georgia, and Nashville.
That’s because the new routes offer service not just to tourist-focused destinations, but business-oriented hubs as well. That has been a goal of New Haven’s business community for a half century.
“Florida has been a real hit” with vacationers and leisure travelers so far, Levy said. He said that 100,000 passengers have flown on around 800 flights in and out of Tweed since the budget airline first launched its New Haven-Florida service last November.
As for D.C., Chicago, and Raleigh, he said, “we do think that these routes in particular are going to be of interest … to the business community.”
State DECD Commissioner Lehman.
Lehman agreed. New Haven has one of the fastest growing economies in the state, he said. “It’s not what comes first, the airport or the economy. They grow together.” And Avelo’s expansion to yet more routes bodes well for the regional economy continuing to flourish.
“This is going to be a major, major, major benefit for [the bioscience] industry,” BioCT President and CEO Dawn Hocevar said.
Scanlon added that the new budget airline service has created more than 100 new jobs to date, with another 100 on the way.
He also said that the airport authority has signed agreements with Metro Taxi and the rideshare service Lyft. It has not yet signed an agreement with Uber, meaning that that rideshare will not drop off or pick up customers directly at the airport.
Tweed last offered flights to Chicago in the 1990s, briefly.
“We have a good problem” — more car traffic now coming to the airport, Mayor Justin Elicker noted. He said the city is working on that challenge. The mayor praised Avelo’s low fares: “So many people in the community can afford a flight to a place they enjoy.”
Scanlon (right).
Tweed's departure terminal.
The press conference came nearly six months after the Board of Alders unanimously approved a 43-year lease agreement between the city and the airport authority. That agreement was designed to tee up a parallel 43-year deal between the airport authority and Avports.
Avports is the Goldman Sachs-owned airport management company that has run the day-to-day operations of Tweed for the past two decades, and that has promised to invest $70 million of its own funds into building a new terminal on the East Haven side of the property and lengthening the airport’s runway in a bid to attract new passenger air service.
According to Scanlon and Roberts on Tuesday, the airport authority and Avports are still working on finalizing that separate “facility” agreement.
Ode To The Airplane Engine
Veoci CEO Grewal: An economic -- and well-engineered -- engine..
One of the local businessperson-guests invited to speak up in support of Avelo’s new routes Tuesday was Sukh Grewal.
Grewal is the CEO and co-founder of Veoci, a locally based software company that provides closed online communication systems for governments and businesses.
Brimming with excitement Tuesday, Grewal called these new routes a boon for his tech business — particularly because Chicago is home to not just several of his company’s clients, but also five of its employees. (Veoci employs 50 people at its Church Street office in New Haven.)
Grewal spent most of his time at the mic talking not about Avelo’s boost to local businesses — but rather his lifelong love of airplanes. And in particular his appreciation of the engineering elegance of the engines used in Avelo’s 737 planes.
Grewal recalled growing up outside of Calcutta, India, and taking a two-hour bus ride to Dum Dum airport just to watch one airplane per hour take flight.
“I’ve been in love with airplanes,” he said. “This is such a wonderful opportunity for me to come and talk about airplanes.”
Grewal said he also spent 10 years working at GE Aircraft Engines, “designing and making jet engine parts.”
He said he’s “really happy to see the planes they’ve chosen,” in particular Avelo’s Boeing 737s with “CFM engines.”
“I don’t think everybody appreciates how beautiful the CFM engine is,” Grewal said. “It has one of the best flow lines you can imagine. It’s just so beautiful. You look at it and say: “This is an exquisite engine.”
Grewal added that these engines have “the lowest departure problems of any engine in the world.”
“If you had one of those engines in a car, you could drive it for a lifetime without going to a garage.”
I love that engine, Grewal concluded. “If you get a chance, get a look at it. It’s just beautiful how the air flows through it.”
Avelo Airlines image
Avelo's nonstop routes from Tweed.
This is great news for the New Haven area.
With an additional flight or two to a major hub such as Atlanta (on a legacy carrier like Delta that has connections everywhere), New Haven could begin hosting business events and conferences. Currently, businesses here have to hold most of their events in NYC or Boston. If we get a Delta or American flight back then New Haven will also need several more hotels.