How much would you pay for a flight out of Bridgeport?
With America’s newest airline offering big discounts on flights to smaller cities, Bridgeport is keeping Sikorsky Memorial Airport in the mix as an option for commercial service.
On Tuesday, Bridgeport and the Connecticut Airport Authority reiterated their joint commitment to plans for commercial flights through Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Stratford, minutes from downtown Bridgeport.
Any expansion of Sikorsky Memorial Airport could add an extra option for some travelers in the Bridgeport-New Haven region depending on the number of destination airports — and potentially competition for Tweed New Haven Airport and other nearby regional airports like Bradley International Airport outside Hartford.
As an initial step toward possible commercial service at Sikorsky Memorial Airport, the State Bond Commission approved $7 million last summer to repave a runway, with plans down the line for a new terminal building.
“We at Bradley have spent a fair amount of marketing dollars down in Fairfield County, and while we’ve been able to attract some of the activity up here, the vast majority of folks are still going down to New York,” said Kevin Dillon, CEO of the Connecticut Airport Authority. “We do feel Sikorsky has a very complementary market to the Bradley market.”
In a Tuesday statement, Mayor Joe Ganim said he expects the investments to pay off “with more professionals seeking alternative options at Sikorsky” in his words, while noting the city’s rail and ferry hubs.
Avelo Airlines recently commenced passenger service to Florida from Tweed, making it the lone carrier operating there after American Airlines scotched a Philadelphia shuttle in October. Avelo is one of the two newest U.S. airlines along with Breeze Airways created by David Neeleman, who founded JetBlue in Darien.
Breeze has been floated as a potential candidate for service out of Sikorsky, with the company’s fleet able to take off and land on shorter runways.
Key domestic destinations
Dillon said there is no plan to extend Sikorsky’s longest runway, which is less than 4,800 feet in length. While that is far too short to accommodate the Boeing 737-700 jets operated by Avelo, it is sufficient length for smaller passenger planes made by Airbus, Bombardier and Embraer, all of which use engines from Pratt & Whitney, based in East Hartford.
Dillon said the airport could benefit by shifting the runway’s footprint to better accommodate Federal Aviation Administration buffer zones that exist for instances when aircraft travel beyond the end of a runway while landing or taking off. Eight people died in 1994 in such an incident at Sikorsky Memorial Airport when a charter plane overran a runway, striking a fence.
Tweed generated opposition by some in the New Haven community on a runway expansion to tack 1,000 feet onto its existing length of 5,600 feet.
“The A220 — right now that’s being used by Breeze but other carriers are looking to incorporate that into their fleet,” Dillon said of the Airbus model. “That aircraft would be very capable of operating off of the runway lengths at Sikorsky. We envision that there would be some key domestic destinations out of Sikorsky — business destinations as well as leisure.”
Only Tailwind Air operates scheduled service today from Sikorsky — a weekday seaplane hop to Manhattan’s New York Skyports terminal on the East River. It is an expensive ticket, with a round-trip ticket
for a late November overnight in New York City selling for $380 as of Wednesday, versus a $28.50 round-trip fare on Metro-North off peak hours.
Many Connecticut residents live within an hour’s drive of a regional airport offering scheduled passenger service, whether Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, New York’s Westchester County Airport across the Greenwich line, or T.F. Green International Airport in Warwick, R.I.
Travelers often pay a premium for those flights compared to the rates offered at the major airports circling New York City. As of Wednesday, the lowest round-trip fares in midFebruary to Orlando, Fla., were $471 from Westchester County Airport and $480 from Bradley, as quoted by Norwalk-based Priceline.
That compared to $341 flying out of Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey or $390 from LaGuardia Airport on Long Island, though higher parking rates and round-trip
tolls and gas chip away at those fare advantages.
‘Hundreds of markets on our list’
Breeze is currently offering only one southern destination out of Bradley and T.F. Green — Charleston, S.C., with a February round trip costing just over $200. In a CNBC interview last May, said Breeze was been able to benefit from lower prices for aircraft and equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing the company to pass those savings to customers in the early going.
“Ninety-five percent of those routes, we have no nonstop competition,” Neeleman told CNBC. “We’re flying routes that haven’t been flown nonstop, really ever . ... We literally have hundreds of markets on our list.”
CAA operates Bradley as well as Waterbury-Oxford Airport which offers scheduled service to Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Stowe, Vt. and Newport, R.I. The authority
also runs the general aviation airfields Hartford-Brainard Airport, Groton-New London Airport, Windham Airport and Danielson Airport, among several in Connecticut.
Reliant Air offers scheduled service to Nantucket from Danbury Municipal Airport, which is operated by the city.
Dillon said he sees potential as well for helicopter shuttle services to eventually find a niche in the Connecticut market, whether to New York City as the case with a short-lived service by U.S. Helicopter more than a decade ago, or other Northeast destinations. The Sikorsky subsidiary of Lockheed Martin offers two models to shuttle operators, but sales have stalled for more than a decade.
“I think there’s a lot of potential for that,” Dillon said.