Bradley airport director: Tweed expansion calls for coordination

NEW HAVEN — On some level, Kevin Dillon, who runs Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, wants to support the expansion that Tweed New Haven Regional Airport has worked for for years. He likes private investment, and repeatedly has said he’s not against having a second viable airport to serve southern Connecticut; the “two-airport strategy” that Tweed long has pushed for.

But he’s wary — and said Monday that if Tweed is going to grow, as it now has a chance to, there must be coordination between the two airports.

“We’ve been talking about coordination in this market for a long time,” said Dillon, executive director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, which last year had talks with the Tweed

New Haven Airport Authority about various forms of coordination, which at one point included the possibility of a merger or takeover of Tweed by the CAA.

The merger or takeover didn’t happen — with both Dillon and Tweed officials saying that Tweed ultimately didn’t want to go there.

But the need for some sort of coordination remains, Dillon said.

And that’s even more the case following the May 6 announcement that Tweed soon will play host to a second airline, Avelo Air, and plans to enter a long-term agreement with Avports, the company that manages Tweed, to spend $100 million to improve the airport, including a longer runway and a new 74,000-square-foot terminal on the East Haven side, he said.

Among the many officials attending the May 6 announcement was Gov.

Ned Lamont, who hailed the private investment in Tweed.

But Dillon said it has to be done with care.

“This is a relatively small aviation market so you have to be careful about how you handle it,” Dillon said. “...

The development of Tweed needs to be carefully coordinated with the development of Bradley.

“There needs to be a mechanism in place that the development of Tweed is coordinated with the development of Bradley,” Dillon said.

Without that, “you start cannibalizing the market,” he said.

The two airports are 56 miles from one another.

Bradley handled 3.23 million enplanements, or people boarding departing flights, in 2019. Tweed had 48,860 enplanements in 2019 and would have the capacity for 500,000 to 750,000 passenger departures a year once all the improvements are in place.

Dillon pointed out that the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey runs all of the major airports ringing New York City (the one exception being Westchester County Airport in White Plains, which is owned by the county and managed by Avports.)

Tweed officials, both at the May 6 announcement and in previous meetings and conversations, have gone out of their way to say that they consider any “competition” Tweed might face to be Connecticut airports versus New York airports that siphon off much of the air traffic from both Bradley’s market and Tweed’s southern Connecticut primary market, or “catchment area.”

But while Tweed officials have said there’s relatively little overlap between the catchment areas of Bradley and Tweed, Dillon said the 12 percent or so overlap Tweed has claimed actually is much greater.

“If looking at a one-hour drive catchment area,” it’s more like “a 66 percent overlap,” according to Dillon’s calculations. “That’s huge,” he said. “So you necessarily have a competitive situation . ... What you do at one airport is ... going to impact what you do at another airport.”

While Tweed considers its catchment area to be the area of the state south of Meriden and Middletown, Dillon considers Bradley’s catchment area to be the almost the entire state plus much of western Massachusetts, although he acknowledged that Bradley’s reach into Fairfield County only extends about as far west as Bridgeport.

A study commissioned by Tweed several years ago showed a primary catchment area of about 1.4 million people living south of Middletown and Meriden, east to Old Saybrook and west into Fairfield County.

Sean Scanlon, executive director of the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority, said coordination with Bradley “is something that we are committed to.”

But while Connecticut is a small state, “they are two separate markets,” said Scanlon, also a Democratic state representative for Guilford and Branford and the House chairman of the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.

“Carriers make decisions based on financial interests and markets, and if a carrier decides that it’s in their best interest to serve two separate markets,” it should be able to, Scanlon said.

But overall, “studies have shown that most people in our market tend to go to New York, not Bradley,” Scanlon said.

To compete successfully in that environment, it’s important for Connecticut to have “a two-airport strategy ... and the airlines will decide which airport they want to invest in — and either way is good for Connecticut,” he said.

“Putting a second airport in Connecticut is all about one thing: choice,” Scanlon said. “We want to put more choice” out for people, he said.

Dillon said that at this point, “we do not have the full details of the deal” that Tweed struck with Avports. “So my commentary on it certainly is limited to what’s been published on it.”

He said he’s hoping that “we’ll be provided the details soon.”

One thing that worries Dillon is the extent to which Avports might be allowed to call the shots regarding Tweed’s ultimate level of air service and growth over the 43-year life of its agreement with the Tweed Authority. That agreement still must be approved by the New Haven Board of Alders.

“I don’t know what level of restrictions are going to be put on a private company,” Dillon said. “What is somewhat concerning is that you have now brought in a private company with a for-profit motive.”

That said, however, “private investment is a good thing,” he said, pointing out that Bradley recent convinced the auto rental companies that serve that airport to invest more than $200 million to build Bradley’s new Transportation Center.

Airport and Avports officials announced May 6 that Avports will spend its own money — about $70 million to start — to extend Tweed’s runway from 5,600 feet to 5,735 feet and build the 74,000-square-foot terminal. Avelo will spend $1.2 million toward renovation costs of the existing terminal in the meantime.

All of that would happen while eliminating the $1.8 million in state and city subsidies that Tweed currently receives, officials said.

Avelo, which expects to begin serving Tweed in the third quarter of this year, has yet to announce where it will fly from New Haven, although CEO Andrew Levy mentioned Florida, Chicago and perhaps Washington, D.C., as possibilities.

Tweed’s only service right now is 5-day-a-week American Eagle service to Philadelphia. American currently only is committed to stay at Tweed through September.