Could change be in the air for New Bedford’s airport?

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At 7:25 and 7:38 a.m. on a Tuesday in April, the day’s only paying passengers departing New Bedford Regional Airport lifted off into overcast skies on two nine-seat Cape Air twin-engine propeller planes. They were bound for Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, but mostly not for frolicking in Edgartown, or strolling Surfside Beach.

The passengers, nine in all, were mostly headed to work. Among them were contractors remodeling a kitchen on Nantucket and a dental hygienist working one of two weekly shifts at a clinic on Martha’s Vineyard.

“Those people on the islands, they depend on us,” said Audra Roper, the hygienist. The Dartmouth resident has been flying this route for 21 years, sharing the ride with electricians, plumbers, and crews working on satellite dishes, swimming pools, and home building, repair and remodeling. 

Cape Air depends on these commuters, too — for something like eight or nine of every 10 passengers to the islands, according to one longtime gate attendant and a few commuters. But Cape Air is the lone passenger carrier left, as changes in air and sea transportation have left the airport scuffling.

Cape Air has lost about three-quarters of its outbound passengers in 10 years. In that time, two other carriers have quickly come and gone. Other than rental cars, the parking lot is often empty. Since the Airport Grille closed in early summer 2023, the only amenities left in the terminal are two vending machines, one of which goes for days not taking dollar bills. 

But, things are happening. This moment in the life of the New Bedford Regional Airport — founded as a military field by the U.S. government in the 1940s, launched as a city enterprise during the Harry Truman years — is loaded with promise, some people say. 

A “field of dreams”?

Early work has begun on a new control tower and terminal, a project estimated at up to $76 million, which city officials hope will draw new tenants. The state would pay for nearly all of the project, if the city contributes $3 million — a request that hasn’t gone to the City Council yet.

Some city officials mention the mantra from the movie “Field of Dreams”: Build it and they will come.  

They look at the place, now rundown and sleepy, and imagine a bustling center for cargo and corporate aviation, a landing pad for offshore wind and high-tech executives. Passenger hub? Perhaps, but the airport manager does not see that happening anytime soon. Some envision a bus shuttle to South Coast Rail a couple miles away at Church Street, perhaps a quick flight link to Boston and the world beyond.

For years the airport — some 900 acres in the North End between two cemeteries and environmentally sensitive land — has been a field of aspirations. 

Airport skeptics say: sure, we’ve heard this before, the airport is forever on the verge of something big. One former airport commissioner argues that restoring more robust passenger service is a “pipe dream.”

A New York aviation consultant is preparing a report to be delivered this summer, charting a flight plan for the years ahead. 

What’ll it be? 

A tough sell from the “street side” 

Officials tout the airport as a selling point for the city, but the place is not exactly selling itself. 

If you drive in from Hathaway Road to the left turn at Shawmut Avenue, you might immediately feel you’re not supposed to be there. Not unless you’re hauling scrap cars for Goyette’s Auto Recycling on the right, or trash to the city transfer and recycling station on the left. You’re running a gauntlet: the city public works yard, Penske truck rentals, E.L. Harvey Waste and Recycling trucks, stands of sad, skinny trees.  

And that’s the better, more direct, way in. 

The other way — to the “main” entrance — is to follow a sign on Shawmut at Nash Road that’s about the size of a business letter, make the right and go nearly two miles out of your way. You’ll pass the Catholic Cemeteries, into a mostly residential side street off Mount Pleasant Street, pass a barber shop, and head into the airport.

Airport Manager Scot Servis imagines a dreamy situation where Delta Airlines executives meet at the airport to discuss doing business in New Bedford. 

If their people fly into the airport, Servis said, “We’ll have the meeting. If they drive in, we won’t.” Why not? “Airfield side, we’re fantastic. Street-side, we have no appeal whatsoever.”

On the street side, it’s the airport that time forgot. 

The Basil Brewer Administration Building — named for the former Standard-Times publisher and aviation champion — opened in October 1951, when Truman still had more than a year left in his presidency. 

It’s been updated a few times since, most recently in the late 1990s. But it’s the oldest terminal among the nine Massachusetts airports now certified by the Federal Aviation Administration to accommodate larger passenger planes — 30 seats or more — according to the state Department of Transportation.

The red-brick structure encompasses the terminal and the control tower, meaning the building lags behind the FAA’s post-Sept. 11 security standards requiring that terminal and tower stand in separate structures.

For a more up-to-date look, try the “air side.” That’s the side of the fence seen by pilots and passengers stepping on and off the planes.

Since 2010, the airport has rebuilt both runways, making them among the newest, if not the newest, in New England, Servis said. They’ve rebuilt a road along the airfield perimeter, along with the entire “apron,” or “ramp” area where aircraft can park, be refueled and maintained. The longer runway has been repainted and the access road to it repaved. A new runway access road is now being built on the northwest corner of the field.

Federal and state grants have paid for nearly all of this work, city officials said. 

Airport swept by waves of change

The folks who run two of the airport’s mainstay businesses, Colonial Air and NorEast Aviation, note the improvements. But every work day they see that empty parking lot, and wonder if there’s a plausible plan to restore some activity.

Chris Cunningham, who has owned Colonial Air since 1983, said he’s not against the city building a new terminal or pursuing more robust passenger service, but he wonders if it’s too late. Has too much changed in the aviation market in general and in New Bedford in particular?

Regular flights to New York stopped in 1989. Once-robust schedules to the islands have dwindled. “All that stuff has migrated away from the airport,” Cunningham said. “It’s not like someone flipped a switch and they went away. I don’t know how to get it back.”

Travelers used to drive to New Bedford to catch flights to the Cape and islands. Now they don’t need to. Since the 1990s, American Airlines and Delta have been flying narrow-body planes to the Cape and islands from New York, Washington and Philadelphia. About 20 years ago, JetBlue joined American and Delta in flying seasonal island routes, said Geoffrey Freeman, director of Martha’s Vineyard Airport.

In 2005, the high-speed ferry company Seastreak launched service out of New Bedford to the islands, said Gordon Carr, executive director of the New Bedford Port Authority. That cut the ferry time to the islands by half or more, at about half the price of a round trip on Cape Air. 

Meanwhile, so-called “fractional” aircraft companies emerged, offering business jet time-sharing. That gave executives an alternative to flying scheduled airlines. This has created more business in refueling, maintaining and storing small jets, but may also have cut into passenger numbers. 

So has the departure of big clothing manufacturers in New Bedford and such companies as Morse Twist Drill, Goodyear, Polaroid, and Chamberlain Manufacturing, Cunningham said. 

“The hard part is, you need 50 people who want to go somewhere at the same time every day,” he said. “Two things that make an airport successful” for passenger carriers, he said. “Either it’s a place to get somewhere else, or it’s a destination. Right now New Bedford doesn’t have either.”

Cape Air aims to better market New Bedford 

Cape Air, the airport’s only commercial airline, is soldiering on amid steadily declining business. 

At its peak in 1999, the airline carried more than 24,000 passengers. Figures released by the city show 1,962 Cape Air passenger boardings in 2024, less than a quarter of the 8,037 in 2014.

Longtime Cape Air gate attendant Nancy Lewin has kept calendar books with daily passenger counts going back to 1999, when her figures show Cape Air boarded more than 4,000 passengers in July alone. Her figures show just under 200 passengers boarding in July 2024.

Mary Stanley, Cape Air’s regional marketing manager, took on some of the onus for the passenger service decline.

“I think I have to do a better job marketing the air services” in New Bedford, she said. She emphasized Cape Air’s commitment to the city as an important part of its portfolio, which also includes routes in northern New England, the Caribbean and Montana. 

Stanley said Cape Air is seeking billboard locations and planning new ads in Rhode Island Monthly. She expects to attend a conference of wedding services providers in Martha’s Vineyard in May, to promote Cape Air flights from New Bedford for destination weddings on the islands. The airline said the company has to expand its pitch into Fall River, the whole South Coast and Newport, R.I. It’s hoping to sustain 400 to 600 passengers a month in summer.

Cape Air plans to offer more flights to the islands this summer than last summer. The new mid-June to mid-October schedule, shared with The Light, shows four flights to Nantucket four days a week, and two trips three days a week. The Martha’s Vineyard schedule shows two flights a day two days a week, one trip on five days.

The airport as flight school 

By one measure of activity, the airport is busier. 

Airport “operations” — which the FAA defines as any contact between an aircraft and the tower, including takeoffs and landings — have risen in 10 years. The city’s numbers show nearly 46,000 operations in 2014, more than 61,000 last year.

Servis said Bridgewater State University’s flight school accounts for about a third of that activity. 

In the course of a one-hour training flight in a Cessna Skyhawk, a student pilot could potentially record dozens of “operations.” That contributes to the “operations” count that can help make the airport eligible for state and federal grants, but the school is not paying the landing fees that contribute to airport revenue.  

Other “operations” are general aviation, meaning private and corporate aircraft.

The dream: bigger planes

Part of the city’s dream for the airport is to add bigger passenger planes. In 2017, the airport restored its FAA certification for commercial service with planes carrying 30 passengers or more.  

Since then, two airlines have launched larger flights and quickly faded. Elite Airways made a few flights down to Vero Beach, Florida. The enterprise lasted four flights or four months, depending on whose version is correct, but that was it.  Southern Airways Express launched service to Nantucket in the middle of the pandemic, in August 2020, then withdrew for a break, returned, and departed early in 2023. 

Restoring the certification cost the city $362,000 for various improvements, and sustaining it has cost an average of $11,424 a year, according to figures compiled by the city.

The return on investment has been more than $14 million in FAA grants, including $1 million for a new fire truck, for which the airport would not have been eligible without the certification, the city said. And, of course, the option to accommodate bigger passenger planes. 

Rick Araujo, the owner of NorEast Aviation, whose customers include Cape Air, says the re-certification has cost his company tens of thousands of dollars to meet safety standards for servicing aircraft with fuel trucks. He and his general manager, Joe DeBella, consider bigger planes a hopeless pursuit.

“Their thing is ‘if we build it, they will come,’ but this isn’t a ‘Field of Dreams,’” DeBella said.

They’re also skeptical about a new terminal, which they fear will end up raising their costs. “We’re barely making it as it is,” Araujo said.

But Assistant Airport Manager Michael Crane said there’s no downside to the certification, “but a lot to lose if you don’t have it.” He hasn’t given up on adding bigger passenger planes. He sees a possible opportunity for New Bedford if T.F. Green Airport outside Providence reaches its capacity. 

Dreamers and skeptics

Airport watchers — including former officials — fall into two camps: some envision a passenger service revival, while others think the city should drop that notion altogether.

Former airport commissioner Paul Barton said he has continued to act as diplomat without portfolio for the airport, lobbying the mayor of Cocoa Beach and the director of Melbourne International Airport in Florida. He sees New Bedford as an appealing destination for Floridians in the summer and for anyone else anytime.

“I believe New Bedford is a destination,” Barton said. “You fly into New Bedford, there’s a beautiful downtown, beautiful restaurants, seafood, hotels. A national park. We have a beautiful zoo. We have miles of beautiful beaches.”

He says the field condition stands in the way of progress. “It’s like a used car lot with a bunch of 1970s dented cars on the lot,” he said. “How do you expect to run that business and make money?

Mike Knabbe, a pilot and former airport commissioner, sees the airport’s future as a hub of cargo and general non-commercial aviation, including corporate jets. 

Knabbe says dreams of bigger passenger carriers “died on the vine. It’ll never happen. It’s a pipe dream…Why would you fly out of New Bedford airport to a small airport in Florida, if you wanted to go to Disney World, if you could go to Providence?”

The terminal may need replacing, he said, but ultimately he said the future lies in more business activity.

“They’re so focused on this new terminal that I honestly believe they’ve lost sight of the big picture,” he said. “They think if you build this big terminal everybody’s going to be dying to come to New Bedford.”

Former New Bedford Airport Manager Donna Belli was sitting in the terminal — a few steps from where the U.S. Transportation Security Administration once had a short-lived checkpoint — recalling bygone airport ambitions. 

She recalled a years-long effort to extend runways that ran into the restrictions of environmentally-sensitive land to the south, and stalwart opposition from neighbors all around. Belli, who is 76, said the talk about a new terminal sounds familiar, and she’s not hopeful.

“I know they’ve been talking about a terminal forever,” said Belli, who became airport manager in 1999 and served for about a dozen years under three mayors. “I won’t live to see it. I look at the operations — how can they justify it? I don’t see how they can.”

At the moment, Empire Aviation Services of New York is working on a report — paid for with $60,000 in U.S. American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds — sizing up the best options. 

Cargo business? Passenger service? Corporate, “fractional,” and general aviation? A mix of all?

Whatever it will be, city officials say the new tower and terminal have to be part of it. 

“One of the things that is holding the airport back is the age of its terminal,” said Philip Cox, an aviation consultant now managing the tower/terminal project. With that improvement, he said, “I think you would have a lot more interest in commercial airlines.”

A question for the City Council

The state’s pledge to cover 95% of the tower and terminal project hinges on the balance coming from the city. The City Council has not yet been handed a request for the city’s share, about $3 million to $4 million.

The airport, now nearly a $1.3 million-a-year operation, runs as an “enterprise fund.” That means it is supposed to support itself on leases, fuel surcharges and parking fees and not need subsidies from local taxes. It fell short of that mark by $35,000 in the 2023 budget year, and was expected to do so again this year, by nearly $320,000. 

An airport business plan completed in 2018 noted that similarly sized city and county airports across the country operate as enterprise funds, and “are not consistently self-sufficient.” 

That may not mollify critics on the council, who are skeptical about approving the $3 million to $4 million.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Ward 2 Councilor Maria Giesta, who has consistently argued for turning airport management over to a private enterprise. She said she’s waiting to hear more about the tower/terminal project, but at the moment she’s not a likely “yes” vote.

“The discussion’s been going on for as long as I can remember: ‘what are we going to do with that airport?’ “ Giesta said. “They keep making promises.”

With so many taxpayers struggling to pay their bills, with aging infrastructure and other more immediate needs, Giesta said her main question on the airport is: “What’s the benefit? How does it help the neighborhoods?”

Ward 1 Councilor Leo Choquette, who chairs the council’s Airport Committee and represents the neighborhoods around the airport, said “for every three people, two aren’t thrilled” with the prospect of more airport activity and noise.

“I understand, nobody likes more noise,” said Choquette, who said he lives under the flight approach himself. “I have to balance that against the city moving forward. We can’t stay where we are.”

He said he thinks a $3 million city contribution in return for about $60 million or more from the state is a good deal.

Cox, the project manager, said the airport has chosen a tower designer and expects to have the contract for that work signed during the summer. The designer for the terminal has yet to be chosen, Cox said.

A site has been chosen for the slightly taller tower, a spot near a stand of trees north of the runways.

The Cape Air flight bound for Nantucket that Tuesday flew over the site on takeoff. Among others on board was Pete Souza, a job manager for Kitchens & Baths, a local contractor, heading for a home kitchen remodeling job. He said he’s been flying the route for 38 years for work, sometimes Monday through Friday for months at a time. 

People he knows say he’s crazy for doing this, but he said he finds the flight schedule better than the ferry. He just wishes there were more flights. He said he’s been hounding Cape Air for years, but nothing’s happened. For him and others, the airport always seems promising.

“This airport has so much potential,” he said. “It’s sad.”

Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.

Editor’s note: This story was modified on Thursday, May 8, 2025, to correct the company name of Morse Twist Drill.

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