Formerly Known as ORH fan
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Editor’s note: We could not agree more with this comment!!
So when Massport builds more parking and ORH is still floundering I can already predict what the next “problem” will be….. Terminal isn’t large enough. It’s one excuse after another up there. First it was the landing system. If I recall correctly the FAA initially rejected it because it didn’t think the cost to benefit was going to be positive. Massport agrees to fund and build it anyways because it was supposed to make ORH so much more attractive to potential airlines. Here we are 5 or 6 years now after CAT 3 went live, and service-wise, we are not any better off than before CAT 3. Now apparently parking is an issue. I think that’s a bit overblown. With the exception of school vacations and holidays, there’s plenty of parking up there. Have you ever driven by Logan during school vacations? They were parking cars in the medians and under the overpasses at one point. I also worked about a mile up 1A from Logan for 6 years before I moved back out to Worcester and Massport was renting the empty parking lots at the old Wonderland dog track for quite a long time. If Massport was really all in on growing ORH they should have been able to forsee that they’d need more parking. It’s been 14 years since they took over and ORH is floundering like it always has. I had to drive up to see a client in Amesbury, MA today and there is more signage for Manchester Airport on the highway (a highway in Massachusetts by the way) than there is for Worcester Airport on any other highway. Yeah, we have the bland green sign on 290 and a bunch of smaller, almost unnoticeable signs on the pike, but why is an airport in New Hampshire getting such a huge sign presence in Massachusetts?
ORH isn’t going to survive with a couple of flights to Florida. They should be going all in on getting Avelo or Breeze in here. Then maybe JetBlue will finally have some competition and won’t treat ORH like they are now. Look what happened in Portsmouth, NH. Breeze announced new service there and within a matter of days Allegiant expanded their service at Portsmouth. I don’t really believe that airlines are rejecting ORH because of a lack of parking. Again, Massport has been in charge for 14 years now. Over the course of 14 years, there theoretically could have been several airlines that visited and if parking really was a main concern, Massport would have built more by now and we’d have better service than we do. Either way, they better figure out something up there. I can totally see Avelo setting up shop in Providence. With all of the major expansions and new service being added at every other airport, it won’t be long before ORH becomes irrelevant. It already is to most travelers.
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7 thoughts on “Formerly Known as ORH fan”
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Do you think Worcester is growing because the city of Worcester is great ? Let me tell you that’s not the case! Worcester is growing because Boston is to expensive. Your local politicians didn’t help Worcester grow or Worcester Airport. The shift of Boston people moving to Worcester is so they can live a better life on 125,000 a year. There is nothing to do in Worcester ever, down town stinks, polar park stinks,, the snow stinks, the streets stink. The people that left Boston are supporting the airport. Let’s be thankful the airport is operating and we have jet blue, delta and American. AVELO changes flight and routes months to month, they’re a joke. Breeze would be a good play for Worcester, but Massport won’t let Breeze compete. Parking is a huge issue, where are you going to park cars in McDonald’s parking lot or the plaza down the road if you drove in from Westbrough and there is no parking at Worcester Airport. If Worcester offered ten flights a day, do you think there would be enough parking to accommodate the people flying in and out of Worcester. A few times this year, I was dropped off, because parking was getting tight. What would I have done if there was no parking available, drive back to my house and take an uber, come on think about it. They took some of the airport pad to accommodate a flight to Ft, Meyers 2x times a week. You would need at least 2000 parking spots for ten flights a day. More flights more employees that need to park, more rental cars, more restaurant etc.
Look at my comment on one of the other posts about parking and doing a Google search for a satellite view of ORH. The two parking lots are barely half full. You can tell the satellite image is fairly recent because it shows the newly expanded lot to the South of the terminal. Just for the hell of it I took a detour through ORH on my way home today. There’s more than enough open parking spots right now. And again, Massport has been in charge up there 14 years and we have almost nothing to show for it. Lack of parking isn’t the reason airlines aren’t coming here. Lack of parking isn’t holding back New Haven from growing and it’s not holding back Pease from growing. I’m really starting to think that Massport is intentionally holding ORH back to direct everything to Logan. I don’t want to think that but ORH has been stuck in a sand trap for way too long.
Avelo is a brand new airline so there’s going to be bumps along the way but they have been extremely successful at the majority of the airports they’ve gone into. They also have the best reliability/on-time ratings of any airline. JetBlue sucks. The only reason they are here is to kiss Massport’s ass to get what they want at Logan. If their flights at ORH are so successful, then why did they significantly expand and add new service at almost every airport in New England this past week except for ORH??? And I don’t even know why Delta and American are here. Their flights are useless to most people. Airlines don’t stick around with passenger loads under 50%. There’s clearly some arrangement with Massport to leverage what they want at Logan. Massport probably thought JetBlue was going to be the savior that saved ORH and put it back on the map. 11 years later and JetBlue is doing the bare minimum, and 11 years from now, it’ll probably still be the bare minimum.
I don’t use ORH nor do I have any plan to with its current flight offerings. Do you know how many people there are that would love to use ORH??? There’s a lot. But like me, they’re giving all their business to Providence and Logan. I would switch over to ORH in a heartbeat if we could get a flight to West Palm Beach or better connecting service from Delta and American. I’m probably spending at least a few thousand dollars on flights alone out of Providence every year. That business could be going to ORH along with all the other people who are using Providence and Manchester because getting to Logan from here can be a headache. If anyone has been to Logan recently, the Sumner Tunnel closure has created absolute gridlock leaving the airport. I visited a client job site in Chelsea recently and on the way back spent almost an hour trying to get through the Ted Williams Tunnel. ORH is missing some great opportunities to capture some of that business with the people who find getting to/from Logan to be a headache. It’s not going to matter for much longer anyways. With all the expansion at Providence, Bradley, and Manchester, ORH is teetering on the brink of irrelevance.
All airlines would rather fly right past Worcester and land in Boston, its what 25 nautical miles. I flew back from Honolulu on Hawaiian airlines and the flight path went past Worcester, I looked out the window I was like look Worcester Airport, 4-5 minutes later I was looking at the city of Boston. Central Ma residents are lucky the airport is not shelter and running as an airport. The flight loads for the JB flight are doing well. What would you rather have a closed airport? AVELO runs flight 2x a week, they won’t last. They’re running 52 routes with 21 planes. They built up tweed airport and now moving into Bradley, let’s see what happens to tweed. AVELO changes so much I you can’t keep up. As long at Ft. Lauderdale and SDQ keep upgrading I will be happy.
ORH isn’t going to survive long-term with two flights to Florida from JetBlue and lousy flights from Delta and American. Airlines whose only commitment to ORH is to suck up to Massport to get what they want at Logan. The parking situation would be a simple fix if they could somehow work out a deal to use the Worcester State lot down the street temporarily, at least during school vacation and holiday periods, and until they come up with a more permanent solution. The majority of the time there is plenty of parking at ORH. Drove by ORH yesterday and the parking lots looked like maybe they were half full. I couldn’t go into the lots, but from the road I could see that there were plenty of spaces available. Lack of parking isn’t keeping airlines away. I know I’ve already said this, but Massport has been in charge for 14 years at ORH now. If lack of parking was keeping the airlines away, they should have addressed it by now. Massport has bungled this from the beginning starting with never properly marketing the airport. Remember when they offered free parking up there the year after the pandemic? Didn’t see a single advertisement anywhere. More recently over the last couple of years there have been the tunnel closures going to/from Logan. Again, another great opportunity wasted to tout the benefits of flying out of ORH. It does not appear that Massport wants ORH to be successful. Maybe it’s intentional to drive as much business to Logan as possible. I know a lot of people in the area that dread going to Logan. They’re now giving all their business to TF Green, Bradley, and Manchester. I almost exclusively use TF Green now as it’s a hell of a lot easier that getting to Logan. I pretty much only use Logan for international flights. I did recently book a flight out of Bradley so I’m curious to see how that goes. Can’t get to West Palm Beach conveniently from ORH so my business goes elsewhere. Haven’t used ORH since the DirectAir days. One of my cousins has a business here in MA with an office in Florida. When DirectAir was here my cousin was flying on DirectAir to Florida and back multiple times per month out of ORH. He didn’t care that the planes were old. It was all about convenience. He still flies to Florida and back multiple times a month but all that business now goes to Bradley. My wife’s uncle that lives in Leominster has a place near Tampa and pretty much exclusively uses Manchester now. I’m sure he’d rather drive the 25 or 30 minutes to ORH but other than Manchester, Logan is his only other option and Manchester is much easier for him to get to. I guess the point is that if Massport is trying to drive as much business to Logan as possible it’s not working. A good amount of people in the area are going to out of state airports just to avoid the headaches (traffic, tunnel closures, crappy public transportation, ridiculous parking fees, etc.) that come with flying out of Logan. With all the expansion happening at those out of state airports, even more people will use them as an alternative to Logan. Think about it, Worcester County has close to 900,000 people. It’s one of the fastest growing counties in the country. Wouldn’t Massport want to tap into that market? Instead a good chunk of that market is using out of state airports. There’s no way that they are making any money operating ORH. Get better connecting service and flights to additional vacation destinations and market it properly and people will use ORH in droves. I would be one of the first ones to come back to ORH if that was the case.
Companies need to loose money, Worcester airport is the loosing airport for them. It is what it is, I guess. Well at least we have flights.
Couple of things I want to mention in this comment reading everyone’s comments and then 2 additional pieces of news.
First, the parking at ORH at the moment is fine. It’s a quiet travel period and usually tourists season in Florida is quietest in August/September (which is a great time to go to Florida if you want low crowds). I still believe there needs to be more spots for peak travel season but with the WSU lot, as much of a great idea it would be, Andy Davis mentioned that he doesn’t want that for ORH so unfortunately that’s eliminated.
Second, JetBlue is expected to cut more routes. I still think ORH is safe but it’s being watched. Which brings me to the next thing.
Third, The flight schedule has changed since I previously mentioned it. The Fort Lauderdale flight will be 4x a week (no flights Tuesday/Wednesday/Saturday) from 9/3-10/31. It’ll then bring back the Saturday flight starting 11/2 and be 5x a week until 11/21. From there till 1/6 it’ll be daily for the holiday season and then go back to being 5x a week (no Tuesday/Wednesday) until 2/13. The Orlando flight has no flights on Tuesday/wednesday from 9/3 to 10/31 then will be back to daily after that. The Fort Myers flight. Fort Myers flight is Sunday and Thursday starting 10/27 and then daily starting 2/13. This is all subject to change.
Last, JetBlue earnings came out and to a surprise to everyone, they actually turned a profit for Q2. The profit was only $25 million but everyone was expecting them to lose money. They are still dealing with Pratt and Whitney engine issues and are deferring aircraft deliveries of the A321neo to 2030 but all E190s will be gone by the end of next year. I just read the earnings call and there’s some interesting info about the next couple of years on it. Nothing mentioned about Worcester but there is a lot of mentioning about the northeast in general. Still want to know from Marty himself why Worcester wasn’t included because maybe it’s a reason none of us are actually thinking of. Maybe it isn’t parking, maybe it’s JetBlue not wanting to expand to Worcester, maybe it’s another hidden issue the airport has that we’re not seeing, maybe it’s the airport getting more construction done on the taxiways and not expanding again until that’s done. Who knows exactly but hopefully we’ll see from Andy Davis or Marty St George
I also read the JB report, 25 million is a nothing burger. The stock is low, most investors are in $ 5-7 higher and they want their money back. Robin Hayes destroyed the company. JB owes spirit $ 400 million. Parking is a jam up there you can’t fly ten flights a day with the current parking. JB is going back to a regional carrier bringing in the PR will be huge. I’m in DR now and the flights down are always full. American is expanding in the DR and PR. American is going to start flying to LaRomana from Miami. I still believe Worcester will grow, we don’t close airports anymore.