Tweed-New Haven Airport (KHVN), New Haven, Connecticut

Tweed New Haven Airport struggles for more commercial flights amid rough climate 

NEW HAVEN >> In the current air travel climate, can what’s wrong with Tweed New Haven Regional Airport be fixed? 

Can Tweed be a viable commercial airport in an environment in which airlines are merging and retrenching and smaller airports across the country are losing service under the weight of sky-high airplane fuel prices?

Airport and city officials say it can, although one prominent aviation consultant isn’t so sure.

Tweed officials, along with city, regional and business officials, have angled for better air service for 17 years now since United, United Express and Continental Express all pulled out within a few months of each other.

That was in 1996 and 1997.

There have been twists and turns since then, including the creation of the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority, a couple of years with Delta Connection service to Cincinnati and a few short-lived attempts by start-up airlines that no longer exist.

But for most of that time, Tweed has remained a one-airline airport, with steady if not always competitively priced US Airways Express service to Philadelphia and beyond; three or four flights a day.

This past year, enplanements were 36,737, a slight drop from 2012. 

The 2012 figure compares with 2.6 million at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks — with which Tweed is not trying to compete — 1.8 million at T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island, 890,000 at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., and 185,000 at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, N.Y.

In recent years, many smaller airports have lost service as airlines concentrate into larger planes and larger airports. Can Tweed survive and be a viable airport under those conditions?

“I feel strongly that Tweed can be successful, as it is in a unique region where there is a strong need for air service,” said Mark Volchek, chairman of the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority and co-founder of New Haven-based financial services firm Higher One.

“Going to NYC airports from CT poses challenges given highway congestion, so Tweed has the opportunity to serve those customers, if we can attract appropriate air service,” Volchek said in an e-mail.

When many Tweed advocates talk about a better future for Tweed, however, the conversation increasingly includes the suggestion that a longer runway — always a desire, but a politically difficult one — is now the only way to accomplish what Tweed wants to do.

Mayor Toni Harp spoke during her State of the City address about the need to get Tweed moving at a faster clip because of its importance to the regional economy. She’d like to work with neighbors to smooth the way for flights to Washington, D.C., Florida and Chicago within two years.

A number of Tweed Authority advocates say the best way to achieve that would be to pave one or both of the grassy runway safety areas, or RSAs, constructed a few years ago at either end of Tweed’s 5,600-foot runway. The authority recently commissioned an environmental assessment; a precursor to seeking funding.

City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson, who has been trying to build Tweed since 1989, when he was president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, said Tweed is not like other small airports “because of the density and the wealth of the Northeast Corridor.” 

What also sets it apart is the fact that its “catchment area” — the people for whom Tweed is the closest airport — is so dense and under-served, he said.

The airport must be sensitive to its “unique responsibility to protect the people who live nearby ... But we know that this airport is critical” to the future and south central Connecticut’s economy, Nemerson said.

“Anyone who has ever been on the Whitestone Bridge at 6 a.m. or 11 p.m. in the middle of traffic when they’re paving those lanes knows what a pain in the neck it can be to connect to the rest of the world from this region — and the airlines know this, too,” he said.

Nemerson pointed out that the Memorandum of Agreement that New Haven and East Haven signed to clear the way for the RSAs to be built “basically says that there should be about 190,000 enplanements ... We, right now, are at (36,737.) We’re at one-sixth of the level of service that we committed to deliver...

Tweed’s main runway actually has just a 5,200-foot usable length because of a “displaced threshold” the federal government imposed because of obstructions, predominantly trees, along the runway approach. Removing all the obstructions would add 400 feet to the runway’s usable length, but several neighbors have dug in and refuse to allow it.
By way of comparison, the primary runway at Bradley — which, unlike Tweed, is not surrounded by residential neighborhoods — is 9,502 feet long.

A major stumbling block to paving the safety areas — in addition to the fact that New Haven officials agreed as part of a settlement with East Haven not to pave them — is that in 2009, the following stipulation was written into the act that created the airport authority:    “...Runway 2-20 of the airport shall not exceed the existing paved runway length of five thousand six hundred linear feet.”

East Haven has strongly opposed runway extension in the past.

Members of New Haven’s legislative delegation filed a bill this past winter that would raise the amount of state funds appropriated each year for Tweed from $1.5 million to $2 million and change existing legislation to allow state bonding “for the taking of nearby trees” and “the paving of existing runway safety areas.”

It has yet to be acted upon, but East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. vowed last month to have town attorneys conduct in-depth research on whether the proposed runway extension would have a negative effect on residents.

Adding air service is desirable to Tweed advocates not only for convenience but for fiscal reasons. 

Of Tweed’s $2.7 million budget, about 68 percent of the revenue came from city and state subsidies, according to the fiscal 2012-2013 audit, with another 32 percent in on-airport revenue coming from landing fees, fuel flow fees, land rental, car rental and taxi service concessions and passenger parking lot charges.

The Board of Alders balks some years at what is now a $325,000 subsidy. The state provides $1.5 million.

Tweed Authority Executive Director Tim Larson — also a Democratic state representative serving East Hartford — said he was not in a position to talk about the chances of success of the legislation, saying, “That’s a question that you have to ask the New Haven delegation.”

But “there’s no question that we have money in an environmental assessment looking at the dynamics of lengthening the runway to 6,000 feet,” he said.

“What we would propose to do and what the EA (environmental assessment) is looking at is paving the runway safety area the full 1,000 feet to the south...” Larson said. “We’re only looking at paving some portion of the northern RSA,” which must remain because it also serves a flood control function, he said.

With regard to Tweed’s potential, Larson said, “frankly the airline industry has always thought highly of the New Haven market...I think the New Haven market has great potential,” Larson said.

Tom Reich, director of air service development for AvPorts, the company that manages Tweed for the authority, said that while the past few years have been difficult for smaller airports, “Tweed New Haven Airport is in a unique category.”

When you talk about smaller airports, “a lot of those airports are in smaller areas; they’re rural,” he said. With Tweed, “its demographics, its location and the fact that it has institutions such as Yale ... lead me to believe this is not a typical small market.

“I represent a lot of different airports and when you pitch ideas to airlines, they can give you a very good idea of how serious they might be,” Reich said. “And when I talk to them about Tweed, there is a level of interest... There is a keen level of interest, where every time we see them at a conference, they ask us about the status of that runway.”

One problem is that an airline like Frontier, which currently is flying out of Trenton, N.J., and Wilmington, Del., and might be interested in Tweed, flies only 150-seat Airbus planes. They can easily land at Tweed, “but in order to take off, they’d have 30 or 40 seats blocked off” because of weight restrictions to ensure they have enough fuel to make it to more distant destinations, Reich said.

Allegiant, which flies out of Stewart but recently discontinued service from Islip, N.Y., uses similar planes, which makes the idea of Tweed getting to a runway of at least 6,000 feet even more crucial, he said. 

But commercial aviation consultant Michael Boyd of the Boyd Group International in Colorado said that talking about Tweed’s potential for new service “is all fine. The problem is, there’s no airline that wants to do it...

“I would certainly endorse a longer runway,” Boyd said. But Tweed is “from that perspective, a very tough place to go... The problem is, even with the drive to New York... there’s a lot more service out of Bradley...

“The problem is, airlines are not adding airplanes... They’re retiring old ones,” he said. “Everything is pointing in the wrong direction...

Getting air service for Tweed “is a real long shot and it’s getting longer every day.”

That doesn’t mean there isn’t potential at Tweed, but Boyd thinks it’s more likely to be in general aviation — private planes — or civil aviation. “There are opportunities for Tweed New Haven, I believe. The question is how do you maximize them?” 

“We do need a longer runway,” said Tweed’s acting director, Diane Jackson. With at least 500 feet in additional runway, “we would be more attractive to the airlines.

“The changes in the industry, I think make it more difficult for everybody,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it makes us less viable, but it makes it more of a challenge.”

Story and photo:  http://www.nhregister.com