Jetson Comment

2 thoughts on “Jetson Comment”

1. 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.

2. Just adding to the alleged lack of parking issue: If you look at a Google satellite image of the airport both the lot across from the terminal and the recently expanded lot to the South of the terminal are both barely half full. I know this satellite image must be fairly recent because it shows the expanded lot to the South of the terminal. The point is that I don’t think that an alleged lack of parking is the reason why there isn’t better airline service there. For those few school vacation weeks and holidays I don’t see why they can’t work something out to temporarily use the Worcester State lot down the road. As I said in my previous post, Massport was using the old Wonderland dog track parking lots for overflow parking for several years. There just doesn’t seem to be any will on Massport’s part to make ORH successful.

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