NEW HAVEN — American Airlines will cease its longstanding American Eagle daily service between Tweed New Haven Regional Airport and Philadelphia, but expand to twice daily its service to Charlotte, N.C., and beyond on Sept. 9, Tweed announced Monday.
American has been flying one weekly Saturday flight each way between Tweed and Charlotte since December 2018. Philadelphia had been Tweed’s primary, and sometimes only, initial destination for decades, dating back to when US Airways Express operated the service.
In both cases, the initial destination often is a gateway to additional flights to many other destinations, officials have said.
Sean Scanlon, executive director the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority, said Tweed isn’t so much losing Philadelphia service as swapping it for service to a bigger airport that is a more major hub for American.
“Daily service to Charlotte has been a goal of ours for some time and we are very excited to begin this new chapter of improved service at Tweed-New Haven,” Scanlon said.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport, abbreviated CLT, is one of America’s busiest hub airports and is American’s second-biggest hub, Scanlon said.
It serves more than 150 U.S., Caribbean and international destinations with 700 daily flights, he said.
“I really do believe this swap gets us 20-plus more destinations, 200-plus more flights per day,” Scanlon said. “Charlotte is the 11th biggest airport in the country and PHL is 20th.”
“For all those reasons, I think we’re really excited about this,” Scanlon said. “When I met with American Airlines back in February before all this (coronavirus) happened, they always said that Charlotte daily (service) was their goal.”
For all the years American had flown between Tweed and Philadelphia, “a very small amount” of the traffic “was just to Philadelphia,” he said. “Our top destinations were to Florida and the south” and “Charlotte is a gateway to the south and the Caribbean.”
Charlotte also is a gateway to the southwest, Scanlon said.
He also said he thought the effect of the pandemic, particularly on business travel that now has been replaced in many cases by Zoom calls, was a factor in American’s decision.
“I think American made this decision with the understanding that business travel was not going to come back as fast as leisure travel,” and Charlotte is a better hub for leisure travel, Scanlon said.
“We feel like this is a good thing for us. At a time when many airlines are cutting back ... they’re swapping us for a bigger airport.”
Tweed Authority Chairman John Picard said that as far as he was concerned, “We lost Philly and we gained more service at Charlotte.” American “thought Charlotte was a bigger hub and a better hub for us.”
Picard, former mayor of West Haven, said he didn’t want to disparage Philadelphia, but thought flights to the Charlotte airport would provide more travel opportunities to and from Tweed.
American Eagle, which once flew four flights a day to and from PHL, had dropped down to two flights a day to and from PHL since the onset of the pandemic.
The expanded Charlotte service will use the same 76-passenger Embraer E175 regional jets that American Eagle had been using in recent years for the Philadelphia service, Scanlon asid.
“Nothing is changing except we’re going to a different airport,” he said.
Scanlon said in a written release that Monday’s announcement “is a reflection of the momentum Tweed New Haven has to play a key role in regional air travel despite the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the airline industry.
“At a time when many airports are scaling back service due to the pandemic, we are transitioning to serve a bigger market,” he said. “American sees the potential of our market and where we are heading here in New Haven.”
Tweed is in the midst of doing its periodic airport master plan update, an 18-month process that includes both community and technical advisory input. The master plan update is scheduled to be done in March 2021.
“Once that plan is finalized and approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, Tweed plans to lengthen their main runway, which Scanlon says will allow for more flights and destinations,” the airport said in the release.
“With expanded service on the horizon and air travel back on the rise, the future of Tweed is bright,” Scanlon said in the release.
City and airport officials have said they need to extend the 5,600-foot main runway to at least 6,000 feet in order to attact additional commercial airlines.
Key legislators, including state Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and Senate Minority Leader Leonard Fasano, R-North Haven, have said they won’t support runway extension until Tweed works out a package of benefits and incentives for the adjacent neighborhoods on both sides that would be most affected by it.
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