Boston Globe -- NorthWest Weekly section
February 23, 2003

Airline to add Cape service at Hanscom
By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent

BEDFORD -- Although it has had only a very limited presence at Hanscom Field since first landing here last July, Boston-Maine Airways will push on, introducing service March 20 to Hyannis, Nantucket, and Marth's Voineyard, a company executive said Wednesday.

"Hanscom is a viable airport, and we're the ones who can make things happen there," asserted Dan Fortnam, marketing vice president for the carrier based in Portsmouth, N.H.

Fortnam acknowledged that little demand, resulting in an all-time low of two Hanscom passengers last month, has greatly hampered operations to date. He also conceded that its Martha's Vineyard service last summer did not pan out.

"But we've made a big investment to try to establish ourselves at Hanscom," he said, "and we're still confident that service to the Cape and the islands will work out."

Richard Walsh, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which owns and operates Hanscom, said of Boston-Maine, "We wish them well."

Last year, Boston-Maine's Hanscom operations totaled 228, compared with 6,375 for Shuttle America, operating as US Airways Express.

When Boston-Maine inaugurated its Hanscom service last July 1, it posted 122 flights a week to not only Martha's Vineyard, but also to White Plains, N.Y.; Bangor, Maine; Portsmouth; Atlantic City, N.J.; and St. John, New Brunswick. But only a small percentage of those flights ever took off, due to lackluster demand. But beginning March 20, Fortnam said, Boston-Maine wil be in a comeback mode, offering two round-trips a day to Hyannis, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard. The first flight each day, he noted, will be from Hanscom to Hyannis and Nantucket; the second will be from Hanscom to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyward. One-way fare to the islands is likely to be $78, he said.

It's also possible, he said, that the airline may beef up its summer schedule to St. John. Currently, there is one flight a day, from St. John to Portsmouth to Hanscom. Additional flights to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, as well as to Bangor and St. John, will depart from Manchester, N.H., also beginning March 20, he said.

In a related Hanscom development, Massport will repave the airfield's parking lot and upgrade terminal building rest rooms during the spring and summer, Walsh told members of the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission at their brief meeting Tuesday evening in Lexington.

Repaving and relining the 600-space lot is budgeted at $600,000, Walsh said, adding that the cost of the rest room renovations has not yet been estimated.

Massport also intends to file its final Hanscom environmental impact study with the state at the end of May, Walsh said. Last Dec. 17, then-state Environmental Affairs Secretary Robert Durand said the preliminary 2005-2015 study "adequately and properly complies with" state laws.

However, opponents of commercial and corporate aviation at Hanscom are still maintaining that Massport, in its environmental blueprint for Hanscom, underestimated the impact of noise, air pollution, and traffic on Bedford, Concord, Lexington and Lincoln, the communities surrounding the airfied.

Massport says that its projections of environmental factors are within tolerable limits.

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