Bradley International Airport’s nosedive in passenger traffic amid the coronavirus pandemic and Connecticut’s travel advisory restrictions threatens to wipe away years of advances toward transforming the state’s largest airport into a higher-profile air travel hub, airport officials warn.
“Pre-pandemic, I was very bullish on this market,” Kevin Dillon, executive director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, which oversees Bradley, said. “Post-pandemic, there are a lot of questions about where we are going to be.”
Bradley faces the potential loss of major routes, and the full scope of its ambitious, 20-year development plan that includes a second terminal could be delayed indefinitely or scrapped all together, Dillon said.
One major airline serving Bradley, JetBlue, said it is watching passenger counts and how the travel advisory plays out. Passengers arriving from more than 30 states are currently required to quarantine for two weeks upon their arrival.
“We have been in discussions with Bradley International about adding flights to a number of new West Coast destinations but unfortunately, the travel advisory has created a significant reduction in demand for Hartford flights as Connecticut residents make use of other regional out-of-state airports,” Philip Stewart, a JetBlue spokesman, said, in a statement.
“The airline industry is facing significant challenges, and we expect to be a smaller airline for a while, so we cannot continue to fly all the same routes we are flying today,” Stewart said. “We have to focus on flights that generate enough customer demand, and we are currently reviewing our ongoing presence at Bradley airport in light of this outlook.”
Southwest Airlines, another major carrier at Bradley, already announced that it has temporarily suspended direct service from Bradley to Orlando, St. Louis and Denver this fall. It is unclear whether those suspensions could be extended.
Business and leisure travel are certainly down in the pandemic, but the quarantine is pushing it down even further, and unnecessarily so, Dillon said.
Dillon is pressing the Lamont administration for a testing option for those arriving from states on the travel advisory. The test could be done at the airport — the CAA already has contracted with a lab that promises a 24-hour turnaround — or it could be performed at another location. The traveler would have to quarantine while waiting for the results, Dillon said.
If arriving passengers don’t want to submit to a test, the two-week quarantine would still hold, Dillon said.
Gov. Ned Lamont, at a COVID-19 news briefing this week, said he is always willing to make alternatives as conditions change, but he made no commitment to a testing option at the airport.
“I’m looking down at Florida and Texas and California, their infection rates are dropping quite a bit.” Lamont said, when asked about the option. “They’re still in our quarantine zone but a lot less infectious than they were just two weeks ago, so I will take a look at that.”
David Lehman, the state’s economic development commissioner, said he is well aware of the plight of smaller airports such as Bradley in the face of the pandemic. Bradley, Lehman said, is critical to the state’s economy and its future growth.
But the travel advisory quarantine — now seen as the most effective option — is part of a larger strategy to keep the virus spread in check, to strengthen the state’s economy and give people the confidence to shop, dine out and go to the workplace.
“There needs to be the recognition that keeping the numbers low and the transmission low is not just good for the public health but the economy,” Lehman said.
Lehman said there are a lot of variables to consider for an airport testing option, including the prospect of false negatives and virus incubation periods.
Dillon said he well understands the state is working to manage a public health crisis, but the airport needs the kind of leeway given to, for example, restaurants, which can open on a limited basis.
“There’s still risk, but you’re managing the risk,” Dillon said. “Well, this isn’t much different. Let me manage the risk from high-infection states by doing testing.”
Driving into Bradley these days, there is a tangible sign of the airport’s future aspirations. A $210 million transportation center — part of the 20-year, $1.4 billion development plan — began construction last year and will be a hub for pick-up and drop-off of rental cars, avoiding shuttle trips to off-site parking lots. The center is expected to be completed in 2022.
Today, the rental car business around the airport is struggling to stay afloat, Dillon said.
Since the CAA was formed and took over management of Bradley in 2013, air passengers have increased 24% to 6.7 million in 2019, from 5.4 million. In that time, direct, nonstop transatlantic flights returned to Bradley with service from Aer Lingus. (Both Aer Lingus and Air Canada have not flown out of Bradley in months because of international flight restrictions.)
The goal has been to reach 10 million passengers a year, a level that would require the second terminal.
The CAA had expected passenger traffic to keep growing in 2020, but then the pandemic hit. In April, traffic was down 97% compared with the previous year, Dillon said.
There was some recovery in May, but that was again reversed by the travel advisory in June. For the first seven months of this year, air passengers totaled 1.6 million.
Dillon said the plunge in passengers has meant, so far, a hit of $10 million in revenue, a hiring freeze and now a second round of 10% cost cuts. Income also has been reduced because restaurants and other concessions in the concourse are closed and can’t make rent payments.
The airport did receive $28 million from the federal CARES Act, but it is being spread out over as many months as possible, Dillon said.
Dillon said weak travel numbers may extend into the spring of next year, though he is hopeful a coronavirus vaccine will gradually build up confidence among the flying public.
Some forecasts, however, have predicted the airline industry will not recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2024.
Like JetBlue, other airlines have made it clear that they will maintain smaller fleets of aircraft, perhaps for years after the pandemic. Competition among airports for routes — always intense — will become even more so, Dillon said.
So, Dillon said, airports the size of Bradley need to send the message they are doing everything they can to work with struggling airlines during the pandemic, so Bradley will stay on the radar after the crisis passes. Introducing testing is one way to do that, he said.
“At the end of this pandemic, airlines will have to go back to New York, they will have to go back to New Jersey, Newark Airport,” Dillon said. “They have to have those locations in their route structures. You can be an airline and not serve Hartford.”
Courant staff writer Russell Blair contributed to this story.
Contact Kenneth R. Gosselin at kgosselin@courant.com.
