ORH Fan (Formerly Known As)

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“It’s probably just a rotation of advertisements that have not been updated.”

Herein lies one of the many problems why this airport is a fledgling operation. Their marketing/social media people that put up these Facebook posts and tweets probably couldn’t find ORH if you dropped them on Airport Drive. It’s clear that ORH is an afterthought for Massport. All their focus is on Logan Airport. They barely market ORH at all and when they do they tell us Las Vegas is one stop away but fail to tell us that you have to fly 1,300 miles to Florida in the wrong direction first.

I was talking to a friend that just was just down in North Carolina recently. He was saying that the flight from North Carolina to Boston was about 2 hours and when he landed in Boston it took him 2+ hours to get back home on the T to Newton. So his flight from North Carolina was actually faster than his commute home from the airport. When I was living in Boston I would fly down to Philadelphia several times a year because I had family there. There were times that the flight from Philly to Boston was quicker than my trip home, a mere 8 miles from Logan. Massport is really missing an opportunity here to get ORH back on the map with Sumner Tunnel closure. There’s a whole thing on the Massport Logan Airport webpage about the Sumner Tunnel closure and transportation options, etc., but nowhere does it say to consider flying out of ORH. It’s pretty clear that ORH is an afterthought to them. I can’t even see how anyone could say that Massport buying ORH has been a success. JetBlue has been here 10 years and at the moment we only have the same 2 flights to Orlando and Fort Lauderdale that they started out with here back in 2013. Sure, we’re getting a seasonal Fort Myers flight, but that will be it because it’s pretty clear that JetBlue has no plans to have more than 3 flights here. American to JFK? Meh….. Lousy flight time and limited connection options. Same with Delta. How is it that literally every airport around is adding service, and ORH just stays stagnant? With the $$$ that have been spent there and the length of time that Massport has now owned ORH, we should be in a much better position than we are at the moment.

You want this airport to be successful? Here’s what you do:
-Come up with a better marketing plan. It’s clear that relying mostly on social media to advertise ORH isn’t working. Better signage in and around Worcester would be beneficial as well.
-Get another airline in here to add more flights to Florida (West Palm, Tampa), South Carolina, and North Carolina as those would seem to be the most popular direct routes out of ORH. I just recently read somewhere that West Palm Beach International Airport is waiving landing fees for 2 years in an effort to expand service. Massport should be trying to find an airline to offer service to PBI from ORH. It would be an instant success.
-Better service to connecting hubs. It’s pretty clear that American to JFK is a miserable failure. Incentivize American to fly to Charlotte or DC out of ORH. That would open up pretty much the entire American domestic route map to people flying out of ORH. Ditto for Delta, do the same and incentivize them to ditch LaGuardia and fly to Atlanta from ORH. Not only would this open up the entire Delta domestic route map to fliers out of ORH, it would also open up Delta’s entire international route map as well.

Literally every airport around us is growing and there are absolutely zero reasons that ORH can’t do the same.