It was November 2021 when Avelo struck gold. The airline went into the recently-abandoned New Haven Tweed airport along the southern Connecticut coast, and it instantly found strong demand. It has grown to having almost 20 daily departures on peak days, a remarkable feat considering how constrained the airport is. But now, the airport seems to have hit a wall. Breeze just entered New Haven, and, well, things are not going well.
New Haven was a sleepy little airport with limited service on American — previously US Airways — to the Philadelphia hub for many years. It wasn’t lighting the world on fire or getting even close to it, but Avelo’s initial business plan saw something different. It found a real opportunity to create a New York reliever that would serve all those wealthy bedroom communities in Westchester and Connecticut for their leisure travels. why drive to a mess of a congested airport in New York City if you didn’t have to? American left quickly, but Avelo found quick success with Florida flights. Then it kept growing, and growing, and growing.
This was all pretty remarkable considering how constrained the airport’s facilities are. At last check, there were a couple of cardboard boxes doing double duty as a terminal facility with just a handful of parking spaces available for Avelo. There is a plan to build a new terminal and extend the runway, but until that is done, it was just assumed that Avelo would be the only game in town.
Avelo built up to just shy of 20 departures on peak days over spring break, and while the terminal building was packed, the operation was running ok. Then, Breeze decided to make its move.
Breeze started with only 2 to 3 flights per day, but adding a second airline requires a significant operational change on the terminal side. Sure, you can no longer coordinate all your flights, but in the terminal you need multiple ticket counters, baggage processes, etc. It’s easy for Avelo to know its capabilities when nobody else is flying there, but now with another airline? It’s a different story.
Now let’s play a little game. I’m going to let you guess when Breeze started flying based on the below chart:
New Haven (HVN) Operational Data by Day
Data via Anuvu
How did you know it was in December? This is shocking. Breeze actually started on December 10, and that coincides with the operation tanking at the airport. The green line shows arrivals within 14 minutes for flights departing New Haven. The blue columns show the average taxi-out time.
It looks like things have rebounded a little since those early days, but that doesn’t matter. We ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Both Breeze and Avelo have plans to add more flights in this race to gridlock.
New Haven (HVN) Monthly Departures by Airline
Data via Cirium
Not only will Breeze double its flights to as many as 6 daily in February, but Avelo is growing and defending its turf as well. So far, there has never been more than 20 daily departures at the airport, but starting in February there will be 25 to 26 daily.
It seems like something will have to give here, but so far nobody is budging. Presumably, a little experience and maybe some flight schedule tweaks can gain some reliability back for the two carriers, but at least in the near term, you can expect pain.
In other words, if you’re flying out of New Haven, get there early and hope for the best.
