My MassPort Story

Two years ago, we came up with the idea that we should approach JetBlue based on their substantial investment in the Embraer 190. Our idea was that we should talk to JetBlue about flying a shuttle from ORH-JFK, JetBlue's hub, where one could fly direct to their other destinations. At that time JetBlue did not fly from many destinations in New England other then Burlington, VT to JFK and a few, very few, flights from Boston to Florida (maybe some other locations).

Finally Tom Moore contacted Dave Ulmer, the strategic flight planner for JetBlue, and invited him to ORH and he accepted the invitation. One of my concerns was that, if this was such a good idea, then should we not be concerned about Logan/MassPort taking the idea. Our airport director, Eric Waldron, assured me that MassPort was not interested in the hub/spoke model. They would only do point to point routes.

At this point Tim DeSantis put together a great video, entitled the JetBlue Road, to show JetBlue how easier it could be to get to ORH on the JetBlue road. The day of the meeting at the airport, there was a great turn-out (40-50 people) including Tom Kinton from MassPort. What happened after that?? I have no idea , since when I asked questions about follow-up to JetBlue I was told to 1) stay out of it and 2) they had it under control.

In the end MassPort ended up getting a huge commitment from JetBlue, including 10 flights to JFK (our idea which Mr Waldron told us would never happen), and we ended up with nothing??? I do not blame MassPort for not helping us, we need to watch out for ourselves but MassPort, our "partner" could have negotiated two, of the ten flights, to JFK...