Airport Authority, MetroHartford Alliance partner to recruit direct flight to London from Bradley Airport
PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED
Kevin Dillon is the executive director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, overseer of Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.
The Connecticut Airport Authority and MetroHartford Alliance are teaming up to recruit a direct flight from Bradley International Airport to a key European city with strong ties to Hartford’s insurance industry.
Kevin Dillon, executive director of the CAA, announced Tuesday that his agency will be entering into a public-private partnership with the Alliance to land a direct flight to Heathrow Airport in London.
Connecticut’s only other existing direct flight to Europe is offered by Aer Lingus, which recently relaunched service from Bradley to Dublin, Ireland.
“Our research has shown that we can certainly sustain the Aer Lingus service, as well as at least one daily flight to London,” Dillon said Tuesday morning during the MetroHartford Alliance’s annual meeting held at the Pratt & Whitney Hangar Museum in East Hartford.
Dillon said landing a direct London flight will be a challenge and likely require help from the state in the form of a revenue guarantee to entice an airline to consider providing the service.
That’s how Connecticut originally landed Aer Lingus’ direct flight to Dublin.
The recruitment effort, Dillon said, will include outreach to the business community, to understand their travel needs to Europe and London.
He said the CAA and Alliance will be looking for company commitments to the service.
“That’s going to be very, very important as we try to entice the airlines to provide this service,” Dillon said. “They are going to want to see that the business community is squarely behind this effort.”
Over the coming months, CAA and the Alliance will be reaching out to businesses to get their feedback on the potential flight.
Dillon said Bradley continues to recover from the pandemic and hopes to return to pre-pandemic passenger counts soon.
From January through September of this year, the CAA recorded 4.67 million passenger flights in and out of Bradley, up nearly 10% from the year-ago period. By comparison, Bradley recorded 5.06 million passengers during the first nine months of 2019, CAA data shows.
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