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Time To Put Up - Or Shut Up
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Business New Haven
1/20/2003
By: BNH
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Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority Chairman Lawrence J. DeNardis revealed January 15 that his group had been negotiating with Delta Airlines the possibility of introducing service between New Haven and Cincinnati.
If Delta or one of its Delta Express contract operators were to begin service here later this year, it would fill a void in jet service created by the departures of United, United Express and Continental Express said goodbye to Tweed in the mid-1990s.
DeNardis' announced was good news, maybe. Not as good was the revelation made the same day by Mayor John DeStefano Jr. that the money-losing airport might close by July 1, a victim of the state's massive budget shortfall. The authority has asked the state to take over Tweed, and such a takeover was included in the Transportation Strategy Board plan recently sent to the General Assembly. But Gov. John G. Rowland has indicated that action on that recommendation is not likely to be affordable in 2003. Over the past five years the state has provided about $3 million to Tweed.
What ought to determine Tweed's future is not the willingness of bureaucrats and politicos to throw good money after bad - but actual demand from the marketplace for flights out of Tweed.
To that end, DeNardis said that the Regional Growth Partnership and Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce are canvassing area businesses in search of commitments for future travel.
As was reported in this space last September 16, this is a strategy employed successfully in Wichita, Kan., where some 400 area businesses agreed to shell out $4.7 million in air fares to lure low-cost carrier AirTran to a market that offered travelers high fares and few options. In addition, the city of Wichita agreed to add up to $4.5 million in revenue guarantees over two years, and local officials chipped in $600,000 to market and promote the new service.
Based on that experience, we think DeNardis & Co. are barking up the right tree. The University of New Haven president and former congressman said his group would speak to institutions such as Yale, United Technologies, Bayer and GE. When they do, we hope they will ask for specific dollar commitments from those groups to buy Delta tickets out of Tweed. If they get them, that will be language the Delta executives truly understand.
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