Barely six weeks since trans-Atlantic service arrived at Bradley International Airport, early airline traffic data shows three out of four passengers use the daily flight to Amsterdam to connect to cities elsewhere in Europe.
Airport spokesman Kiran Jain said the trend is an encouraging sign that the service is quickly being adopted by consumers as an alternative way to fly into Europe, although Jain stopped short of calling the much-lauded service a success.
“We’re pleased, but we are always cautiously optimistic,” Jain said. “Things can change pretty quickly.”
The once daily Northwest flight between Bradley and Schiphol International Airport carries a maximum 160 passengers each way.
Although Jain declined to give out hard data, she said the flight daily averaged between 120 and 150 passengers, which she said fell well within the 80 percent mark Northwest pegged for the service.
Eighty one destinations connect to Schiphol. The most popular terminal destinations for the Amsterdam-bound passengers from Hartford were Paris and Rome, followed by Munich, Copenhagen, Athens and Delhi, Jain said.
A big boost for the service has been the presence of Continental, Northwest and Delta airlines, which are part of the Star Alliance, which allow customers to more easily connect onto those airlines from non-hub airports such as Bradley.
The quick uptake of the Amsterdam service is welcome news for the airport, which has seen its total available seats shrink by 10 percent since last year.
Another big boost has been summer success of the domestic airline industry as a whole.
Nationwide, July was one of the busiest months in recent memory. Although typically one of the busiest travel months of the year, travelers boosted seven major carriers to record percentages of filled seats.
Nearly nine out of 10 seats were filled on domestic flights for American, Continental, Delta, US Airways, AirTran and Alaska Airlines. Southwest reported a record for July, while Northwest was up slightly from July 2006, with more than 88 percent of seats filled.
