The Connecticut Airport Authority is in talks with Norwegian Air Shuttle to bring European discount flights to Bradley International Airport, authority Executive Director Kevin Dillon confirmed Friday.
Norwegian told the Wall Street Journal earlier this week it is considering adding flights to Europe from Bradley International Airport, T.F. Green in Providence and other airports. According to MassLive, Norwegian said this week that it will offer flights from Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, N.Y., to Cork, Ireland.
Since Norwegian confirmed talks with Bradley, Dillon said, “I’ll confirm it as well. I believe Norwegian is getting close to making some decisions.”
Dillon said Aer Lingus’ debut at Bradley this past September makes the airport more attractive to additional airlines, as well as potential service expansions by existing airlines.
“We anticipate we’re going to end the year [with] around six million passengers and I’m expecting we’ll be at least 2 percent above where we were last year,” he said, once fourth quarter numbers are available. “There’s no doubt anytime we increase seats here at the airport we increase passenger counts. There’s a lot of demand and it’s a matter of convincing the airlines to put additional routes and additional seats into the airport. We’ve demonstrated when we add seats, we can adequately sell those seats.”
He said a “number” of negotiations are underway domestically and internationally, declining to specify how many, and noting that many times negotiations literally take years.
“We’re very focused on the route structure now that we’ve achieved LA [service in June],” Dillon said. Targeted candidate cities for domestic service out of Bradley include San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Austin, Milwaukee and Jacksonville, he said.
