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September 2, 2020

Bradley Airport chief: Travel restrictions slowing recovery; major airline routes in jeopardy

Photo | Bradley International Airport Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.
By Sean Teehan

Connecticut's restrictions on travel to and from 33 U.S. states and territories has largely killed off signs of recovery at Bradley International Airport.

Passenger traffic reached its nadir in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic but had been improving in recent months, said Kevin Dillon, executive director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, which oversees Bradley. 

"If you look at April at the start of the pandemic, we were down close to 98% [compared to the same period last year]," Dillon said. "Between April and the end of May we were able to drop that loss" to 70-75%.

But since Gov. Ned Lamont issued an executive order requiring travelers from most U.S. states and territories to quarantine for 14 days upon arriving in Connecticut, those gains have largely disappeared, Dillon said. Recently passenger traffic has been down by as much as the low 80%'s depending on the day.

Revenue is down, too. Between April and June, Bradley's operating revenues were $10 million below budget, according to CAA figures. 

Lamont has extended the executive order to apply until February, and Dillon said the airport is at serious risk of losing airlines currently running routes out of Bradley. Airlines have also suffered financially amid the pandemic, and the travel restrictions make Bradley nearly unusable to them, since their routes go to and from states and territories on the restricted list. 

For example, Dillon said, the only routes JetBlue runs out of Bradley go to Florida and Puerto Rico, which are both on the restricted list. Southwest Airlines has halted all routes except to Baltimore and Chicago.

The long-term risk of losing airline routes for good is particularly worrying for Bradley, Dillon said. Airlines have signaled intentions to emerge from the pandemic as smaller companies, Dillon said, and they could easily decide to service Connecticut passengers via Boston or New York.

"It's a big concern for us for what it means for the future of the relationships with airlines that we've worked very hard over the past five or six years to develop," Dillon said.

Photo | Contributed
CT Airport Authority Executive Director Kevin Dillon.

Dillon said he's been in contact with the Health Department and Department of Economic and Community Development, and asked the state Chief Operations Officer Josh Geballe for an exemption that would allow travelers from restricted areas who test negative for COVID-19 to enter the state without a 14-day quarantine. However, Dillon said, Geballe declined the request.

Lamont spokesman Max Reiss on Wednesday said allowing such a broad exemption would punch holes in Connecticut's virus containment strategy, something for which there is currently "no appetite."

"Our entire goal is to limit the spread of the virus to protect as many Connecticut residents as possible," Reiss said. "What [exemptions] inherently do is weaken the travel advisory."

Bradley already enacted a hiring freeze, and cut expenses by about 10%, Dillon said. CAA is currently trying to reduce expenses by another 10%, but layoffs of any of CAA's 160 employees will not be considered, Dillon said.

Despite financial woes, CAA is moving forward with a $210-million project that will build a new ground transportation center. The new facility will place all rental car companies at the airport, eliminating the need for shuttle service from the airport to the rental agencies’ off-site locations. It will include 830 parking spaces for rental cars.

Most of the money for the project has already been bonded, and design work and materials have already been committed, so it wasn't possible to delay for revenue reasons, Dillon said. 

However, that project highlights the fact that a host of other businesses are also dependent on Bradley's passenger traffic, Dillon said. CAA is currently working with the car rental companies to avoid an exodus, he added.

“This is what's certainly taking a lot of our focus; trying to manage these issues," Dillon said.

This story has been updated to include comment from the Lamont Administration.

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