🔒Tweed Makeover: New Haven airport leaders’ master plan includes relocating terminal, extending runway to lure more direct flights

The leaders at Tweed New Haven Airport imagine a time when leisure travelers will hop on a plane straight to Disney World. Or when New Haven area business travelers view Tweed as their first choice when they need to fly.

After 18 months of preparation, Tweed has submitted a new master plan to federal regulators that sets an ambitious vision for the future.

Most notably, it calls for relocating the airport’s terminal across the border into East Haven, and extending the airport runway, allowing it to accommodate heavier planes, and as a result, nonstop flights to further locations than it can reach now.

Targeted routes include direct flights to Florida, Washington, D.C., Chicago and North Carolina.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recommends that publicly-owned airports such as Tweed submit a new master plan every 10 years, or as local aviation conditions change. Tweed’s existing master plan was completed in 2002.

“What we found over the course of our study was that if we want to be competitive, if we want to attract the kind of service that I think this region wants, which is a mix of both leisure and business, then we’ve got to lengthen the runway,” said Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon, who is also a Democratic state representative.

Extended debate

The debate to extend Tweed’s runway has been a long-standing issue in the state that’s been in the courts and split public opinion. The business community and airport proponents say it could have a major economic impact on the region, while opponents have raised concerns about how it would affect nearby residential neighborhoods.

The issue reached a turning point in 2019 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a decade-old state law that limited the length of Tweed’s main runway.

The master plan is a comprehensive project that takes into account various factors and forecasts, and it must be approved by the FAA before any action can move forward.

The plan studied several issues, including where the airport’s terminal should be located.

The Airport Authority has recommended relocating it to East Haven on Proto Drive, which has less of a residential neighborhood and more commercial properties in the area, Scanlon said.

“Having a lot of traffic going through small streets is kind of an issue. And if we want to build, it makes a little more sense to go into a commercial area than it is to build off of a residential alone,” Scanlon said.

Plans for a new terminal are still in the early stages. Scanlon did not disclose the total cost for the project, but hinted it would be in the tens of millions. The runway project will be funded almost entirely by the federal government. And the new terminal would be financed, in an ideal world, through a partnership with a private investor, he said.

The other issue was determining how long the runway must be to attract more flights. The authority recommends adding another 1,035 feet, which would bring the total length to 6,635 feet.

“People think a bigger runway means bigger planes,” Scanlon said. “No, what it means is that planes can go further. There is a common misconception that we’re trying to get jumbo jets in here. No. We just want to be able to have planes similar to the ones that we have now and be able to go further distances.”

Essentially a longer runway allows planes to carry more fuel and people, which would incentivize carriers to begin to fly nonstop to destinations, including Florida.

“That’s a very important market for us. There are a lot of people in our area that want to get to Florida, nonstop,” Scanlon said. “So by having more room to take off and land, you could add more weight to the plane. And more fuel gets you to go further. If you get further, you get more people who are interested to come here because they don’t want to fly to Philadelphia then Charlotte then Florida. They want to go straight to Orlando.”

Business on board

The business community has largely supported runway expansion efforts.

“It’s all about being able to get in and get out of New Haven easily,” said Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Garrett Sheehan. “If we can have more robust options from the airport that allow for our businesses, whether we have people traveling out, or if they have customers, clients or researchers coming into New Haven, it’s a lot easier to get in.”

Sheehan said the expansion of services will be great from an economic development standpoint, particularly for manufacturers.

“I’ve heard from manufacturers — maybe one of their customers is doing business here and they put New Haven at the tail end [of their trip] because it takes longer and more effort to get there,” he said. “They have to fly into New York, rent a car and drive up — and if you’re at the tail end of that week-long trip, sometimes you could fall off the schedule. I think it really will impact everyone across the board.”

The expansion, however, has gotten pushback from neighbors.

Sean O’Brien lives about 30 yards from the airport, and for a variety of reasons, does not support the expansion, arguing it doesn’t make sense economically or environmentally.

“I don’t see how the airport is going to bring prosperity through all of these things that are promised. I’m also very concerned about climate change and that Tweed has been flying near-empty planes since COVID-19. I’m worried about the impact on health and air quality, particularly for asthmatics,” said O’Brien, who is part of the Stop Tweed Expansion Coalition.

“We’re not just worried about noise, or just a bunch of angry neighbors. I just don’t see the justification,” O’Brien says.

Scanlon says the process to develop the master plan has included a lot of community input. And if the FAA approves the plan, any efforts to move forward with the runway expansion and terminal relocation will require additional layers of local and state approvals.

He anticipates the runway would be built at the earliest in 2023, the terminal in 2024.