Budget Airline Celebrates 100 Days At Tweed

Avelo Airlines announced plans to announce ​“several” new destinations from Tweed in a matter of ​“days, not weeks,” as the budget carrier celebrated 100 days of flying in and out of the Morris Cove-based regional airport.

Long-awaited deals on airport operations with Avports and with Uber, on the other hand, remain elusive.

Avelo top spokesperson Jim Olson prefaced that coming announcement in a purple-and-yellow-balloon-backed press conference Friday commemorating the airline’s first three-plus months flying out of Tweed New Haven Airport.

“In the very near future — and I’m talking days, not weeks — we’re going to be announcing several additional new markets,” Olson said. ​“And as much as we love Florida, these new markets are going to be outside of Florida.”

Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and Mayor Justin Elicker joined Olson for Friday’s presser in Tweed’s departures terminal off of Burr Street.

Avelo started flying out of Tweed last November, and currently provides direct flights from New Haven to six stops in Florida. Soon after 100-plus passengers boarded a Friday morning flight bound for Orlando, the public officials and airport boosters disclosed travel data they described as indications of the growing regional airport’s success so far.

Olson said that Avelo has flown nearly 70,000 customers on around 600 flights to and from Tweed since its first day of New Haven-based service on Nov. 3.

Scanlon said Tweed has created more than 100 new jobs since late last year, and the airport and the airline plan on hiring 100 more people in the coming months.

Olson said that the airline is offering $49 one-way tickets to and from its various Florida destinations out of Tweed over the next two weeks to celebrate the 100 days of New Haven-based flying.

And Olson said that the airline, which currently operates three 147-seat Boeing Next-Generation (NG) 737 – 700 planes out of Tweed, will soon be adding to that fleet.

The press conference comes nearly five months after the Board of Alders unanimously approved a 43-year lease agreement between the city and the airport authority. That agreement was designed to tee up a parallel 43-year deal between the airport authority and Avports. 

Avports is the Goldman Sachs-owned airport management company that has run the day-to-day operations of Tweed for the past two decades, and that has promised to invest $70 million of its own funds into building a new terminal on the East Haven side of the property and lengthening the airport’s runway in a bid to attract new passenger air serve.

So. What’s the latest with this planned ​“facility” agreement between the airport authority and Avports?

“We’re still negotiating a long-term lease with Avports,” Scanlon said. ​“We feel great about getting that done pretty soon.”

Given that the alders passed the city-airport authority lease back in September, what’s the holdup with the airport authority-Avports deal?

“It’s a 43-year deal,” Scanlon said. ​“We want to make sure we’re doing right by the FAA, by the community, by the environment.”

The airport and Avports have promised to invest $5 million into noise and traffic mitigation in the surrounding neighborhood, among other community benefits. What’s the latest with that?

“We’re in conversation with the city all the time about that,” Scanlon said. He said there are new speed bumps on Burr Street, as well as ​“additional enforcement of traffic and parking” in the area. ​“There’s no set time on when we have to implement those things [associated with the $5 million community benefits agreement], but we’re actively” working on it.

And what about the Environmental Stewardship Advisory Committee, which the alders created as part of September’s approval of the 43-year city-airport authority deal?

Scanlon said that the mayors of New Haven and East Haven still have to finish appointing members to that committee. He said the committee will hold its first meeting next Tuesday, Feb. 15.

The New Haven Register’s Mark Zaretsky asked about when the airport authority plans to submit site plan and other necessary applications to East Haven’s city government for the planned new terminal on the East Haven side of the property.

“Nothing will happen without the environmental assessment,” Scanlon said. He said the airport’s environmental assessment of its planned expansion should be finished by this summer. The airport will then move forward with getting any additional regulatory approvals at the local, state, and federal levels that it needs, he said. (Click here to read a recent deep dive in the CTMirror about Tweed’s expansion and climate change.)

He added that the airport plans to extend its main runway by the spring of next year, and build the new terminal by the Fall of 2025.

And what about travelers who want to take an Uber rideshare to or from the airport?

Pressed by Zaretsky, Scanlon said that Tweed does not currently have an agreement with Uber.

“They are not dropping people off” at the airport, he said. ​“We don’t have an agreement with them. We would love to get one with them.” For now, he said, the airport has an agreement with Metro Taxi.

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the press conference in full.

And click on the video to watch Friday’s ​“Word on the Street” interview on WNHH’s LoveBabz LoveTalk radio show. Today’s guest was Isaac Naylor, Avelo’s ​“base manager” at Tweed.