Freight Comment
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Freight is certainly an option for KORH. However, a few barriers have to be considered. Goddard Memorial is not the problem. Though it has a grade, but it’s stretched over 2.5 miles and it’s 2 lanes. The choke points are; Airport Drive from Mill St. Same elevation change, but the grade is spread over only 3/4 of a mile. Getting to the highways; 146, you have the low train bridge on Cambridge. Bottom of Goddard Memorial, a disconnect to get on James St to get down to the pike. Webster Square and Hope Ave rotary back up to get to 290 W. The Pleasant / Highland congestion to get to 290E/190. But that should not be discouragement since Amazon, TJMaxx, and Euro American are making it work. Just think of the benefit the airport would have on the passenger side of the business if the City and State step up to the plate and make improvements to these choke points. Face it, building an access road would be like climbing Mt. Everest. But if they can at least just fix the Goddard Memorial to Jame St. disconnect, that would be more like a hike up Wachusett Mountain.
As Paul indicated, integrators like wide bodies. KORH is a design group 3 airport, meaning it’s runways, taxiways, etc aren’t designed to handle widebody planes.
Until modifications are made on the airfield, the only real option for freight would be narrowbody operations. That’s not a bad thing as I understand Prime is building their narrowbody fleet. So, there’s a chance for some limited freight operations in the not to distant future, but you’re never going to see a Memphis, Indianapolis, or Anchorage at KORH or even a reliever for KBOS, until those wide bodies you see parked there can land at KORH.
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JB just made a slew of cuts from its current service. They added a 1/2 dozen new flights from northeast cities to San Juan PB. Worcester did not loose service, but did not gain PR service. PVD gained PR service. JB is cutting Europe out of some cities in the northeast. Pressure from Carl I bet.
Lose not loose
The JetBlue ship has sailed. They are not expanding anything at ORH. ORH’s future is not JetBlue. We really need better connecting service to hubs like DC, Atlanta, and Charlotte. Right now we have a flight to LaGuardia that has very limited connection options and a flight to JFK that has only one connection option to Florida (Miami). If there is one strength that ORH has, it’s flights to leisure destinations. JFK isn’t even a top ten destination domestically from Logan. I’d much rather have the Philadelphia flight back. It gave travelers way more leisure destination connection options than JFK.
I’m sure in a year that ORH will still have the same 4 flights (or 5 including Fort Myers) and we’ll all still be commenting on ORH’s potential. There will be more fluff news articles about how “great” ORH is doing. And every other airport in New England will have added even more service while ORH flounders. New Haven will probably have blown well past 30 destinations by this time next year. Manchester is making a comeback also. It’s almost as if Massport is intentionally sabotaging ORH.
Prove me wrong Massport.