Airline relocation may impact Hanscom

By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent, 7/4/2002

While the Massachusetts Port Authority is forecasting a rise in commercial aviation at Hanscom Field over the next decade, Shuttle America, the sole commercial operator here until this week, is fine-tuning plans to relocate its headquarters from Connecticut to Indiana.

Lured by state, county, and local government financial sweeteners totaling $751,000, Shuttle America will vacate offices at Bradley International Airport outside Hartford and move into a renovated facility at Fort Wayne International Airport by Sept. 1, spokesman Mark Cestari said.

Beginning Sunday, Shuttle America, operating as US Airways Express, will have four flights each day between Fort Wayne and Pittsburgh. It already serves four cities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia from Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, Boston-Maine Airways, based in Portsmouth, N.H., launched its Hanscom service Monday, with one round-trip a day to Martha's Vineyard.

Shuttle America's move comes amid Massport's forecast of increased flights out of Hanscom. As part of its draft Environmental Status Planning Report released last Thursday, the authority is projecting as many as 65 daily commercial flights in 2005 and 85 in 2015.

Shuttle America began serving Hanscom in September 1995, under a 48-flight-a-day limit that Massport had set four years earlier. The commuter airline had considered Bedford its new corporate base. ''That was our earliest preference, but it turned out there were a number of undoable factors,'' Cestari said, without elaborating.

A Massport spokesman, Richard Walsh, said the agency will not have any comment on Shuttle America's pulling up its corporate stakes.

Some others, however, are wondering whether the airline will pull out of Hanscom in the near future to concentrate on building its base of operations in Fort Wayne.

''The Fort Wayne and Bedford logistics are going to prevent Shuttle America from continuing to be a player in Bedford for too much longer,'' predicted Robert Mann, an airline analyst from Port Washington, N.Y.

Cestari countered, ''Our being based in Fort Wayne shouldn't have any effect on our Hanscom service.'' Shuttle America now flies to Trenton, N.J.; Philadelphia; Martha's Vineyard; and Nantucket from Hanscom.

However, he acknowledged that there will be some changes. About 50 pilots and flight attendants ''will be given the option'' to relocate to Fort Wayne, where most of the airline's major aircraft maintenance work will be performed, he said. A good deal of that work is now done at Hanscom and has prompted some complaints from homeowners near the airfield about engine run-ups at night.

Whether Shuttle America stays or goes, Boston-Maine is going to make the most of opportunities at Hanscom, said Dan Fortnam, marketing vice president. ''We're glad that we've landed'' at Hanscom, he said, ''and we look forward to building on our service there.''

Between July 29 and Sept. 4, he said, the airline will expand its Martha's Vineyard service to three round-trips a day. Starting on Sept. 5, there will be two daily round-trips to Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., he said.

Because of lackluster customer demand, Shuttle America abandoned its White Plains run on April 17, only two days after that service began.

In a related development, a Concord-based historic preservation group, Save Our Heritage, said it will push for federal legislation aimed ''at reining in the growth of Hanscom Field.''

Executive director Anna Winter recently met locally with two of the group's advisory board members, recording artist Don Henley and actor-environmentalist Ed Begley Jr.

Begley said in a statement: ''Massachusetts doesn't appreciate what it has. It has ignored its duty to protect nationally important places like Minute Man National Historical Park and Walden Woods. It's time for Congress to do the job by limiting aviation here, as it has over Grand Canyon National Park.''

Massport says its Hanscom projections through 2015 would have minimal effects on the area's environment or roadways. The forecasts are based on two or three commercial airlines using Hanscom in the coming years, said Tom Ennis, Massport's Hanscom project manager.

But the preliminary environmental assessment findings still have to be hashed over at 10 technical workshops that will be held during September and October in Bedford, Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington.

In the meantime, the report draft will be submitted by the end of this month to the state's environmental affairs office. Once a public comment period ends around Oct. 15, according to Massport, a certificate will be issued to the agency, describing any action that should be taken to protect the environment.

This story ran on page N1 of the Boston Globe on 7/4/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
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