By Gabrielle Gurley
Worcester has its share of municipal headaches, but by this summer city officials will have one less: Worcester Regional Airport.
Under the transportation reforms signed into law last year, the Massport, which has been operating the facility for more than a decade, is set buy the airport from the city. The two parties are working to complete the sale by June 30 as required by lawmakers.
The white elephant has been a drag on Worcester’s finances, costing the city some $1.2 million annually. Airlines have come and gone–more than a dozen in the past 20 years (See the sidebar, “Worcester’s Airport to Nowhere,” CW, Winter 2007.) Virtually everyone from Gov. Deval Patrick and Lt. Gov. Tim Murray (a former Worcester mayor) on down agrees that Massport would do a better job of running the facility.
After 9/11, the airport lost the few enterprising carriers who’d set up shop there, but Massport executive director Tom Kinton said the coming years are likely to bring increased demand, especially from leisure travelers.
Direct Air, a small carrier currently serving the airport, is doing “extremely well,” according to Kinton. To satisfy the get-me-out-of-here February school vacation week crowds, the airline, which flies to Florida and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, tripled its weekly flights.
Yet Worcester Regional’s success can’t depend on snowbirds alone. That means the airport’s short-term focus is likely to shift to a segment of the aviation business with a lower profile: corporate jet travel. Right now, the corporate jet reliever facility to Logan Airport is Hanscom Field in Bedford.
But as business, particularly in sectors like biotech, moves out from Greater Boston toward areas like the former Devens Army base, Kinton believes that Worcester airport will come into its own. “We have a lot of demand for hangars for Massachusetts-based companies out in Worcester,” he told me. “Worcester gives us another option.”
