Boston Globe NorthWest
Sunday, November 16, 2003

Hangar expansion plan puts airport neighbors on alert

By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent

Liberty Mutual Group's proposal to build a 36,000-square-foot hangar at Bedford's Hanscom Field for its fleet of four Falcon jets is revving up concerns among opponents of corporate jet activity at the airfield.

In other recent developments, meanwhile, Shuttle America, a commercial airline now operating as part of US Airways and which once was the target of area grass-roots groups, has reduced the number of daily round trips between Bedford and Trenton, N.J. Also, Mont Tremblant International Airport in Quebec has announced that, beginning Dec. 15, it will be operating ski-trip charter flights twice a week from Bedford.

Liberty Mutual, a large property and casualty insurer based in Boston, is fine-tuning plans for its new hangar, which will also include office space, spokesman John Cusolito said. The company's current 20,500-square-foot hangar ''is too small for maintaining our four aircraft,'' he said. The insurer has been an airfield tenant for 20 years.

The plans will be presented to a monthly meeting of the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission, Cusolito said, noting that a 10-month construction timetable is contemplated.

The Massachusetts Port Authority, the airport's owner-operator, will have a final say on those plans.

Liberty Mutual certainly has a right to fly out of Hanscom Field, said Sheldon Moll, a member and former chairman of the advisory commission. However, he said the company and others sometimes land their jet aircraft between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., prompting complaints from residents in the area.

For some time, Moll, who is also a Bedford selectman, has been logging nighttime noise complaints reported to him and Massport. Moll said he fields about four nighttime complaints each week.

Cusolito said Liberty tries to avoid flying between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. Through Oct. 31 of this year, only 12 flights out of 580 were during those hours, he said.

Jet aircraft noise is always a problem, but a greater concern is the effect it will have over time on landmarks in the region, said Anna Winter, executive director of Save Our Heritage, a Concord-based historic preservation group.

In a written statement Wednesday, Winter zeroed in on Liberty Mutual. ''It is deeply hypocritical,'' she said, ''for a Massachusetts company to sponsor TV ads touting the peace and serenity of Minute Man National Historical Park -- as Liberty Mutual has been doing for almost a year now -- while its jets shatter that serenity every day. The company now plans a new hangar that will undoubtedly provide space for still more jets. This is exactly the kind of development that the National Trust has deplored, and we urge Liberty Mutual to reconsider [its plans].''

In May, at the Save Our Heritage group's urging, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Washington nonprofit organization, placed the Minute Man park ''and environs'' on its list of ''America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.''

Liberty Mutual has indeed sponsored television commercials boosting Massachusetts tourism, Cusolito said. But there is nothing inconsistent, he asserted, between those commercials and the company's presence at Hanscom Field.

The new hangar would have ''a net zero increase on our flight operations there,'' he said.

Overall at Hanscom, for the first nine months of this year, there were 22,272 jet operations of all types, a 2 percent decrease from the same period in 2002, according to Massport. One of the factors responsible for the decline was poorer weather conditions, said Richard Walsh, a Massport spokesman.

In 2002, there were 30,797 jet operations, compared to 22,839 the previous year.

While jet traffic has been increasing annually at the airfield, Shuttle America's turboprop operations have been decreasing.

The carrier, which does business as US Airways Express, has now cut its daily round trips between Bedford and Trenton from six to four. And that change will be in effect until some time next February, Shuttle America chief executive Scott Durgin said in a recent phone interview.

Apparently looking for some ski resort dollars for Quebec, the Mont Tremblant International Airport said in a Nov. 5 announcement that there will be Thursday and Sunday flights from Hanscom Field, staring Dec. 15. Charter fares, keyed to the peaks and valleys of the ski season, are expected to be announced soon.

This story ran on page NW3 of the Boston Globe on 11/16/2003.
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