145 Embark On First Flight To Puerto Rico

Tweed and Avelo are soooo awesome.

Together they have saved me at least sixty, probably more like eighty hours this year, plus several thousand dollars.

Thank you to those who have made this happen!

NOW BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED, that New Haven declares that we face an existential climate
emergency that threatens our city, region, state, nation, civilization, the natural world, and humanity.

What a great moment for New Haven!
I'm sure this is cause for celebration for everyone with a Latin surname...with (ahem) two exceptions.

CT has some of the highest population numbers in the country of Puerto Ricans and Jamaicans and other Caribbean countries immigrants and descendants of immigrants. People also love visiting the Caribbean for vacations and events. Having low cost flights direct to the islands will probably be a huge hit for Avelo Tweed.
We do need to pressure the airline industry to overhaul their industry to go as green as possible in all aspects to help save our planet and improve the quality of life for humans and wildlife and the environment.
Both things can be equally true and valid.

HewNaven, as someone who has worked on climate policy for decades, the expanded service at Tweed poses a conundrum. It is, on the margin, worsening climate change, as well as imposing real environmental costs on its neighbors. But it is also providing real benefits to ordinary people, as described in the article.

There are steps Avelo and the airport can take. The airport can buy electric tugs to reduce CO2 and other emissions from taxiing planes (there is federal money to help pay for the tugs). And Avelo can shift to carbon-neutral fuels. They are on the market now in limited quantities (and at higher prices than traditional fuels).

City Yankee 2, I don't do "Latinx "

@HewNaven, To paint Tweed as a "OFFICIAL CLIMATE EMERGENCY" is going too far. Tweed is a low volume airport. During the summer Avelo had 3-4 flights on Tuesday and Wednesday, the slowest days for air travel.
Tweed has always been fair game as a target, first, "no market for air travel", New Haven no, but Hartford yes? Now talking about pollution, Laguardia has about 400 daily flights, add to that Kennedy and Newark airports, that's high volume. Tweed's market and land size means it will always be a small regional airport, no jumbo jets and no freight hub as a few have said. Don't gulp down the camel and strain out the gnat.

This is HUGE. The whole Avelo operation at Tweed is huge, actually. They took a major chance on New Haven as their east coast base (thankfully, because we were just about to be totally without scheduled service with AA pulling out). Avelo came into this almost-lost-cause of an airport, invested in us as their first east-coast base .. with Boeing 737s and started nonstops to Orlando, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Myers, West Palm Beach, Sarasota, Chicago, Nashville, Myrtle Beach, Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah/Hilton Head, Wilmington NC, Melbourne/Cocoa Beach, Daytona Beach, Baltimore, Greenville SC. and now Puerto Rico. Avelo and Tweed are winning .. as are all the locally New Haven-based airport ground staff, pilots, flight attendants and maintenance crew. Please help & support this fantastic local operation.. Fly Avelo! (From a former long time Tweed Airport airline employee).

@ Heather .C "we have to pressure our corporations and our government." Has not worked for many many decades. What have all the protests, marches, sit-ins, etc accomplished? Some have said having a monorail to Bradley, easy to utter words, quite another thing to realization, Land acquisition, cost of rail towers and tracks, passenger rail cars and many departures to meet flight departures from 6am to 9pm throughout the day.
How many people are willing to use less energy, use small gas saver cars, cut back on car travel? How will the oil companies respond to having greatly reduced sales, airlines reducing flights, stores only selling natural based products instead of plastic, etc? When PC's first came out it was said paper usage would be next to nothing, more paper used today that ever. Recycling is very low, much easier to use the land fills.
I know you mean well but the world we live in is self centered, people want things to get better but are not willing to change any facets of their lives.
Their is a recycle center near where I live, bins for paper, metal, glass, plastic but the dumpster for household trash is full of the recycled things that should be in the bins 25 feet away. It's a people problem.

@HewNaven, over the years Tweed has been blamed for everything that happens in the cove. One said a plane went off the runway, not true. A post showed the FedEx freight hub in Memphis implying that is what was planned for Tweed. Tweed has 400 acres, the Memphis airport has 3900 acres. Bird strikes happen at all airports but larger airports have the most. How many birds and animals are killed on I-95?
The reason I have have been defensive is all the lies floated about Tweed.
The vast majority of the shoreline favors Tweed and the record breaking number of passengers bears that out.
Tweed is not going to cause the demise of the cove like some predicted back in the 90's when United started service to Chicago. Time to accept Tweed for what it is, a small regional airport, not Bradley, not Westchester nor Providence. Direct your efforts to real local issues that can help our neighbors. Tweed is not the enemy.

Are we going to skip over the huge issue of delayed flights, a lot of Avelo customers have experienced? I'm hoping the flights to PR don't experience the same craziness as other routes in Florida. Only flying out a couple times a week can be problematic if your flight is delayed or even worse cancelled. I love the fact that Avelo has boosted the availability to travel aside from driving down to NYC, BDL or Boston, but we can't skip over the issues that many travelers have faced while traveling on this airline and will probably face headed into a busy holiday season.

Take caution fellow travelers and have a back up plan/money if your flight gets delayed and/or cancelled.

If you haven't had a chance to travel to Puerto Rico, you should do so. You don't even need a passport. You get old Spanish architecture, you get cool bars in San Juan, you get amazing beaches and surf. You get the only rainforest in the American territories. You get Culebra and its white sand beaches and sea turtle migrations.

It's a great and nearby spot and honestly I think its cheaper and more fun than a lot of other island-type destinations.

Josh, I dont believe we are doomed. Here is recent article from a climate scientist that provides some hope that we can substantially limit the harm caused by climate change. Fixing climate change is not solely, or even principally, a matter of individual action. But such actions are a necessary part of the answer. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/climate-change-report-us.html?unlocked_article_code=1._0w.ekWN.nxRDLArFwHkQ&smid=url-share

@LucaD, Look at all the other Avelo flights, on time, many early. Operational issues affect all airlines, strong headwinds use up extra fuel, problems with avionics or navigational aids, weather changes at the destination airport, etc. All in all, Avelo is a new carrier that is learning from it's mistakes and as time goes on, certain issues will be better controlled but all airlines at some time experience problems that are out of their control.
The shoreline seems to be happy with Avelo, they coming back to take another flight.

@LucaD, Hot off the presses, https://simpleflying.com/avelo-airlines-busiest-holiday-season-yet/
"According to data compiled by Anuvu, an aggregator of U.S. airline data and market research firm, among all 12 U.S. airlines offering scheduled services, Avelo is ranked number one in year-to-date on-time performance and boasts the lowest YTD cancellation rate."
I know a few will not like this article, but it shows Avelo is running a good operation, not perfect, but good.
So Tweed being a low volume airport means flights and departures can arrive with a minimum amount of delays.