Smaller airports get attention of foreign carriers

Boom in number of flyers, congestion at big airports are some of the reasons

For as long as airlines have been crossing the oceans, airline passengers have had to go to big city airports to catch their overseas flights. So users of the US’ 53rd-busiest airport, in this small town in the suburbs of Hartford, were surprised this fall when Aer Lingus, the flag carrier of Ireland, began flights to Europe.

“It puts us into a different class of airport having that,” said Kevin Dillon, executive director of the airport, Bradley International. “There are not a whole lot of airports this size that have trans-Atlantic service. It put us on the map.”

Warwick, Rhode Island, with an even smaller airport, may soon have the same bragging rights. T F Green Airport, just outside Providence and about 90 miles from Bradley, is negotiating for European flights with the low-cost carrier Norwegian.

“Smaller airports are the next coming thing,” said Bjorn Kjos, chief executive of Norwegian, which is also talking to Stewart International Airport in Orange County, New York, about starting Europe-bound flights.

In 2016, a record 18,000 city pairs were connected by air, according to the International Air Transport Association, an airline trade group. “We’ve seen the addition of 700 new routes this year,” said Brian Pearce, chief economist and director with the association. The growth has been particularly noticeable in the US, Pearce said, but was also significant in Europe and Asia.

While many of the new routes, like All Nippon Airways’ Tokyo-Mexico City flights and Air India’s Delhi-Madrid offering, linked large metropolitan areas, the growth in midsize city connections disrupted long-set patterns. John Grant, a senior analyst with OAG, an aviation data provider, said the new interest in smaller airports has several roots, among them a boom in the number of air travellers, new low-cost carriers offering long-haul flights and congestion at the biggest airports.

“Many markets are already saturated in terms of frequency,” Grant said. “There are only so many times you can fly into New York and London a day.”

New technology also plays a role as huge airliners, with 400 or more seats, are eclipsed in popularity by aircraft of a more moderate size.

“Apart from a few large markets, large aircraft could only be flown when they had a feed of passengers from other markets that would then travel onwards to intercontinental destinations,” said Floris de Haan, head of aviation practice for Ortec, a consulting firm based in the Netherlands.

In the last five years, the companies manufacturing the two biggest airliners, the Boeing 747 and the Airbus A380, have introduced smaller, more fuel-efficient long- and medium-range airplanes that are just right for connecting smaller cities.

The 20 per cent increase in fuel efficiency on the Boeing 787 Dreamlinerwas critical to Norwegian’s decision to begin low-cost flights between gateways in the United States and Norway in 2013. The airline has configured the aircraft to carry 291 to 344 passengers. 

© New York Times News Service