Paul's Comment

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This is the thing, it wasn’t until Rusty mentioned to look at the fiscal budget from now until Fiscal Year 2027 to see what Massport wants to do at the airport. If you look up “Worcester Airport Master Plan” you won’t find anything. I’ve tried searching plenty of times before and didn’t know it was in the fiscal budget to find what Massport wants to do. If someone wants to look for a master plan, they’re going to look up Worcester airport master plan, not think of looking at the fiscal budget first.

The trees being taken down I highly doubt is a vegetation issue here, it’s a complete removal of them all. The area between the Atlantic Aviation hangar and Airport Drive had a majority of trees taken down, the area near Coppage Drive and Godard Memorial Drive had trees taken down. Haven’t driven by it in a while but I believe the trees near the end of runway 29 are still up and not taken down.
Highly doubt vegetation is the case here with that because it’s rare that runway 33/15 is open (only recently has it been more open) anyways and that’s the only area where trees were cut. Rusty brought up another point that you’d never see an A320 land there because of how wide it is. So now the only commercial plane that was landing there that still can is American’s but that’s in rare instances. Now since JetBlue only has A320s at ORH, that runway won’t be touched by them and out of all the times I’ve ever seen delta land and takeoff at ORH, I’ve only seen them use runway 33 once to land but never take off. I thought originally A320s could but forgot that the runway isn’t wide enough and needs more than 5000 feet (certain 737s can). Plus, when a plane takes off on 15 or 33, they have to line up on the runway, then back up on their own, then go. Not efficient and only used if there’s wind or if for some reason 29/11 is shut down.

For talking to Massport, there’s no easy way to guarantee you’ll get an actual answer. It could be that simple “we’re making upgrades at ORH and we’ll keep everyone updated” type crap where it’s an answer for the media and not a legitimate answer. You never even hear when things are announced, I mean I didn’t know the JetBlue announcement of the return of MCO was coming until the evening before. I didn’t even know that Massport talked at Holy Cross.

It’s just more communication. When you want info for something, Massport makes it very complicated to find everything. Only thing that’s easy to find is the website with basic info for those flying out of ORH or into ORH.

I want the airport to succeed, like I said in a previous post I have a couple of trips planned to Florida and I’m just waiting till there’s a sale to book my JetBlue tickets out of ORH. I’ve got 3 business trips in November that will require me to fly but I can’t rely on the airport because times are too late to make connections. Our work crew (we fly out of different airports) has to be at the destination by 4pm wherever we go and there’s no chance I can do that with the current flight schedule. Even if I flew out a day earlier, if my flight gets cancelled, I’m either flying out of a different airport or will be there late. Delta has problems with the current times because LaGuardia is too jammed (it’ll arrive to ORH on time but will leave late sometimes). American’s connection times require me to stop at another airport other than JFK most of the time, JetBlue is just gone now with connections. It’s crap