When I booked my first flight out of Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN) with the new Avelo airline, I debated spending extra for a carry-on bag. My round-trip ticket was only $119, clearly a bargain, and I wanted to keep it that way. So I spent a month searching for a bigger purse, one that would fit under the seat and wouldn’t cost me an extra $35 each way, and then I tried stuffing it with enough clothes to last me three days in Florida.
In the end, pragmatism trumped thriftiness. The day before my 7 a.m. flight to West Palm Beach, I logged onto Avelo’s website and tacked on another $70 for the round-trip carry-on. And it was still a bargain—less than $200 for a smooth ride to Florida and back.
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Other bargains abounded and compounded. The 20-minute driving time from Milford to the airport? Bargain. No traffic, no tolls, no getting lost on the way to the right parking lot at one of the bigger New York or New Jersey airports? Bargains. A fraction of the usual stress? Bargain.
Ticket prices fluctuate and aren’t always as low as the fare I paid, but to travelers in the region, the secondary savings have been crucial. “I loved that it wasn’t a big escapade to get in the car and then worry about an hour drive to the airport to get a shuttle,” says Janet Klicsu, a fellow Milfordite who visited her parents outside of West Palm Beach just after Christmas. “Home was 10 minutes away. It’s all about access.” On the flight itself, “We made really good time. And when we landed [at Tweed] the luggage was right there, all on one carousel, easy to find. I love it. I hope they keep growing and adding more flights.” Indeed, the day after she and I spoke, Avelo announced they were doing just that, adding routes to Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Nashville and Savannah starting in May to go along with six Florida destinations. Klicsu recently started looking for flights to Florida in April, and she checked Avelo first. “But rates are a little spiked now,” she says, adding that she’ll keep checking until she finds the right flight and price, hopefully out of Tweed.
Kathy Barnes and Willard Schulte, also of Milford, tell a similar tale about their flight from Tweed to Tampa in early February. “We picked it for the convenience,” Barnes says. “It’s close to where we live.” There was a minor snafu when Barnes’s carry-on bag turned out to be too big and at the last minute had to check it. But the process was fairly simple, and overall, she enjoyed the experience, with both flights going smoothly and arriving ahead of schedule. “The one complaint was the seats are so tight. There’s no knee room, and I paid for an extra inch.” Tweed executive director Sean Scanlon notes that low fares come with compromises, like tighter space, and Courtney Goff, Avelo communications manager, says more legroom can be found in bulkhead seats and exit rows.
Even with all the dollars, minutes and inches to think about, the best thing about my own trip was harder to quantify: When the plane descended toward New Haven and the waves of Long Island Sound came into view, I felt like I was already home.
Avelo Airlines at Tweed-New Haven Airport
155 Burr St, New Haven (map)
Tweed: (203) 466-8833 | Avelo: (346) 616-9500
www.flytweed.com | www.aveloair.com
Written by Jill Dion. Image provided courtesy of Avelo Airlines.
