Thomas Breen photo
Mayor Toni Harp heralds Tweed decision.
Christopher Peak photo
Mayor Toni Harp and a host of local economic development staffers, business people, and elected officials took a victory lap at Tweed New Haven Airport to celebrate a federal court decision effectively overturning the state’s prohibition on expanding the airport’s runway.
Over 50 people crammed into the main airport terminal in Morris Cove Tuesday afternoon for a press conference touting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision issued earlier in the day in the case Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority v. Tong.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2009 by the airport authority and by the city against then-state Attorney General George Jepson, alleged that the state legislature’s decade-old Runway Statute limiting Tweed’s runway to 5,600 feet conflicts with federal aviation safety laws.
Tuesday’s presser at Tweed New Haven Airport.
A U.S. District Court subsequently found that the airport did not have standing to sue the state because its alleged injury was not caused directly by the statute, and because the state law was not preempted by federal laws.
The appeals court overturned that decision Tuesday, arguing that Tweed does indeed have standing to sue the state, and that the Federal Aviation Act (FAAct) does indeed take precedence over any state laws that impact the safety of airplanes flying into or out of Tweed.
“We hope today’s ruling signals the first step on a path toward improved access to New Haven for all those who want to be here and all who need to be here,” Harp said, “and improved access for New Haven to markets across the country and around the world.”
Conspicuously absent from the press conference was New Haven State Sen. and State Senate President Martin Looney, who called on the state attorney general to appeal the decision. (More later in this article on Looney’s response to the announcement.)
Click here to download the full decision.
Tweed Interim Executive Director Matthew Hoey (right).
The decision renders moot the decade-long battle undertaken by city officials and local state legislators to repeal or circumvent the runway limitation law, which has remained in place in Hartford in part because of the defense of Looney, who represents the portions of New Haven and East Haven covered by the airport.
Opponents to Tweed’s proposed expansion argue that a longer runway and more air traffic would result in a great disruption to Morris Cove residents’ quality of life and would present environmental dangers in a flood-prone part of the city.
“Obviously we’re pleased with the decision. We’re greatly encouraged by it,” Tweed Interim Director Matthew Hoey told the Independent Tuesday morning. He said the airport authority now plans to start working on getting any other Federal Aviation AdminIstration (FAA) and state approvals necessary to begin the expansion.
“This is as much about safety as it is about service enhancement,” he said, citing the argument in the court’s decision that a limited runway unfairly imposed “weight penalties” on aircraft by limiting the number of people who could be on any given plane flying out of Tweed.
This decision will allow the airport to jump on offers from other airlines to bring their service to Tweed, he said, which had previously held off because of the runway restriction. He said the airport authority will prioritize attracting airlines that serve Chicago, Washington D.C., and Florida.
American Airlines currently flies three flights a day from New Haven to Philadelphia, and one flight on Saturdays from New Haven to Charlotte.
Hoey added that the airport authority is about to enter the final phase of its home insulation program, which, when complete, will have seen over $12 million in window replacements and other sound insulation measures taken in nearly 180 houses in the surrounding neighborhood. “We’re going to continue in that vein with which we’ve worked with the community over the years,” he said.
Acting Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Hoey, Harp, and city Acting Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli promised a new round of community benefits and mitigation efforts for neighbors who will be affected by an expanded runway.
“Noise, traffic, stormwater, air quality,” Piscitelli said as he listed where the city will focus its mitigation efforts going forward. “We’re going to continue to work with the community on what the right measures are in these areas of focus.”
Harp and Yale New Haven Hospital Vice President Vincent Petrini praised the court’s decision as opening a whole new gateway to jobs, recruitment, and other economic development previously closed because of the runway restriction.
“In my mind,” Harp said, “the U.S. Court of Appeals today wound up in step with the economic development ideals I’ve had since I first became mayor, and now clears the path to improved air service and improved access to and from New Haven.”
YNHH VP Vincent Petrini.
Petrini heralded today as an important day for Tweed, for New Haven, and for the state more broadly. “Enhanced air service means jobs,” he said. “This state needs jobs. We’re going to work very, very hard to make sure that happens.” YNHH already employs 25,000 people, he said, from Greenwich to Stonington. An expanded runway will allow them to attract “great minds” from throughout the country and throughout the world.
Hoey said he would like to see the airport get to 30 flights per day and 180,000 emplanements per year, which, he said, are the same numbers outlined in the original community benefits agreement between Tweed, East Haven, and New Haven signed back in 2009.
Tweed’s Master Plan, submitted per federal guidelines to the FAA back in 2002, includes extending the length of the runway up to 7,200 feet.
Sen. Looney, not at Tweed on Tuesday.
Looney and State Sen. Len Fasano of North Haven issued a joint release Tuesday urging the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Looney argued that any airport expansion must come with a community benefits agreement reached with the neighborhood.
“The strong residential neighborhoods around Tweed must be protected from any damaging impact caused by the potential overruling of state law,” Looney said.
Fasano accused the Harp administration of “stabbing the community in the back” by originally agreeing to a deal that allowed for airport expansion within limits, then pursuing a court overrule of that deal. He noted that as a state senator, Harp voted for the deal that the federal appeals court has struck down.
“How can the community ever trust Tweed and the City of New Haven again?” Fasano asked.
“While today’s ruling concerns state statute, it does not change the fact that a contract still exists between Tweed, East Haven and New Haven. No federal law can invalidate that contract. I have spoken to the East Haven mayor and it is clear that the contract with Tweed is still enforceable, and therefore restrictions are still in place based on that contract.”
Samantha Norton, a spokesperson for state Attorney General William Tong, said the AG’s office is weighing whether or not to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The Office of the Attorney General is reviewing the decision of the Second Circuit,” she wrote in an email statement, “and will determine whether it will file an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court. The State has 90 days to file such a request, should it elect to do so.”
The Court’s Decision
A skimpy arrivals schedule at Tweed Tuesday afternoon. To expand soon?
The decision itself, written by Circuit Judge Barrington Parker, begins by noting that Tweed has a “catchment area” — or an area from which an airport expects to draw passengers — in excess of one million people. The airport’s primary runway, Runway 2/20, meanwhile, is only 5,600 feet long.
“The runway is one of the shortest commercial airport runways in the country,” he wrote, “and it is the shortest runway for an airport with a catchment area as large as Tweed’s area.” To be precise, the judge wrote, the airport has the 13th shortest runway out of the 348 airports where commercial service is provided in the U.S.
In 2009, the Connecticut legislature passed its Runway Statute, which prohibited Tweed from exceeding the existing paved runway length of 5,600 feet.
“The short length of the Airport’s runway has sharply limited the availability of safe commercial air service at Tweed,” Parker wrote. “The length of a runway has a direct bearing on the weight load and passenger capacity that can be handled on any given flight. For example, at the time of trial, American Airlines, the one commercial airline providing service to and from the Airport, was unable to safely fill its planes to capacity and was required, depending on the weather, to leave between four and nine seats empty.”
Robert Reed photo
Reporter Tom Breen at Tweed for Tuesday’s presser. This photo was taken as part of a collaboration between the Independent and Artspace in anticipation of a new photography exhibition in which photographers hand over their cameras to their subjects. The photos will be shown at Artspace in late July.
Furthermore, Barrington wrote, the runway restriction has limited Tweed’s ability to attract new airline services. He noted that the airport authority has reached out to around 10 different airlines and has been unable to convince any to come to New Haven, all because of the runway.
“Lengthening the runway would allow for the safe use of larger aircraft,” he wrote, “allow flights with no seating restrictions, allow more passengers on each airplane, and allow service to more destinations. It would also allow Tweed to attract more carriers and expand the availability of safe air service for its customers.”
The judge wrote that the court found that the state legislature’s Runway Statute is out of line with the FAAct’s explicit objective of establishing a “uniform and exclusive system of federal regulation in the field of air safety.”
“If every state were free to control the lengths of runways within its boundaries,” he wrote, “this Congressional objective could never be achieved.”
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full press conference.
Allowing a few more flights in to Tweed (which is possible just by paving the grass area that is already designated as runway) can create hundreds of jobs in the area. It would make it possible to host national meetings here. It would also mean that most of the serious businesses in the New Haven area will no longer have to hold their executive meetings in (or even move some of their staff to) places like Boston and New York that have viable business air service.
Bradley is fine for occasional retiree trips and vacations. However, for local firms, it is completely unworkable for regular business travel. Boston, DC, NYC, Austin, Portland, Hartford, and just about every other city in the nation has a major airport within a 10-20 minute drive of the central business district.