Apr. 24—A week after Avelo Airlines diverted seven planes to Delaware from their intended landings at Tweed New Haven Airport, Andrew Levy is still studying complaints from hundreds of angry customers. He's still sorting out what happened in those three nights of heavy fog.
This much he knows as founder and CEO of the startup airline and a longtime industry veteran: "Could we have managed it better? Absolutely, 100 percent yes," Levy said.
"There are a lot of lessons we are learning. This was a very painful three days."
Levy, in a conversation with me late Friday, vowed that Avelo would improve — even before the airline figures out how, exactly, it will change the way it handles adverse events.
"We very much acknowledge that we could have and should have and will do much better in the future," Levy told me.
The interview has been his only public statement since New Haven-bound Avelo jetliners failed to land at Tweed four times on Saturday, April 15; three times the next day, Sunday; and twice on Monday the 17th. Two of those diverted 737 aircraft on Sunday landed at Bradley International Airport. The other seven flights diverted to Wilmington, Del., where Avelo has operations.
Levy is following the difficult path of CEOs who come clean about their companies' shortcomings in a crisis. He's reacting to customers unhappy about chaos, confusion and lost days in the cascading events.
"Communication, that's what I'm zeroing in on as one of our biggest pain points and biggest opportunities for improvement," Levy told me — including on the Avelo website, and directly to customers and crews.
"We do a great job of getting people where they need to go on time," Levy said — normally, that is. Avelo was the No. 2 on-time U.S. airline in the first three months of this year and was No. 1 in fewest flight cancellations.
"But when we have a really difficult set of circumstances like the one that we just had...we as a company have a lot of room for improvement."
Avelo is contacting all of the passengers affected by the diverted flights, cancellations and delays and intends to compensate them for costs, Levy said — even though that's not required by regulators for problems caused by weather.
"I have no doubt that in many cases we will be reimbursing people more than they paid us," he said. "Our brand took a hit."
'A horrible place to divert people'
Immediately after the diverted flights, my colleague Mark Zaretsky at the New Haven Register reached affected customers who told him about nonexistent communications and other issues. One woman from Newtown said her family struggled to get to a local hotel and the next day a friend drove from Connecticut to bring them home — perhaps not knowing that Avelo did fly the aircraft and its passengers back to New Haven that next day.
All five of the flights that diverted to Wilmington over that weekend returned to New Haven successfully the next day. The two that waylaid there on Monday made their way back to Tweed the same day.
But Levy concedes the chaos an called Wilmington "a very, very small airport which has very little in the way of customer convenience...a horrible place to divert people," especially at night when the the landings happened.
As of last Tuesday, Avelo had 4,084 inbound flights to Tweed since it launched service there 17 months ago, Avelo spokesman Jim Olson said. A total of 55 were diverted, or 1.3 percent, almost all of them because of weather. Of those, 27 went to Bradley. Of the 55 diversions, 18 did not make it to Tweed and most of those ended at Bradley.
I set out to report why Avelo had to send seven flights full of passengers more than 200 miles and three states away to a small airport and how that could be avoided. The answer is, it's not easy for a start-up airline such as Avelo, which has 15 destinations from Tweed but does not have operations at most of the major airports.
Any airport in the federal system must accept diverted flights, whether because of weather, a medical emergency or a mechanical problem. But once a plane lands, its airline is responsible for lining up crews to guide the vehicle to a gate, open the gate, assist passengers, move baggage or perform any other ground operations.
That could be as few as three or four people but lining them up is no small task — and it might have to be done, literally, on the fly. It could be another airline or a an aviation ground service company.
"They don't have people just sitting around waiting for people to divert in there," Levy said. "So you show up at some weird hour, an airline that doesn't have a presence there, and sometimes it is really tough and sometimes it is impossible to get somebody to work the flight."
On at least one of the nights, Levy told me, Avelo tried Bradley, JFK in New York, T.F. Green in Rhode Island and White Plains, "and we couldn't find an alternative. At that point we went to Wilmington where we have our own people."
There are ways to make distant diversions less likely to happen and Avelo is working on them, Levy said — including agreements, contracts and possibly even adding operations at Bradley.
'The weather shifted'
Commercial airliners don't just roll down a runway with pilots hoping conditions are okay to land at the other end. They must make sure of that or they can't take off. And on all three nights, Levy told me, it was a go for New Haven.
"In every single case, the weather shifted in a way that was unanticipated," he said. "The problem that made it so difficult is that it just continued for a few days."
Making matters worse — better for business but worse when things go awry — the planes were packed with passengers returning from Spring Break, one of the busiest weeks of the year.
"We also had a number of flights we flat out canceled and really couldn't provide people with an alternative way to get to where they were planning to go," Levy said. "It built upon itself and it was a really tough environment....There's no excuse but it is one of those situations that happen and you have to be able manage it more effectively than we did."
In several instances, one of the 737 airliners bound for New Haven made multiple passes at the airfield to try to land, only to have the fog obscure the runway, making a landing illegal under Federal Aviation Administration rules.
Toni Lorenti, a commercial pilot on another airline who lives in Meriden, followed some of the Tweed Avelo flights on an internet channel as they happened. They explained to me that at Tweed, the pilots must be able to see the runway when the plane is 294 feet off the ground — or they must abort the landing.
"It is an instantaneous decision," said Lorenti, a captain who has 25 years of professional flying experience. "They had the required visibility many times in this affair."
A crucial point here: Aborting a landing is not a dangerous maneuver for a modern aircraft and at no point was any Avelo passenger at risk. And despite issues connected with the diversions, Levy said he is aware of no FAA violations or safety compromises of any kind, or allegations of any, in the affected Avelo flights.
Some neighbors of Tweed have tried to use the diversions as fuel for their arguments to stop the airport expansion, saying the fog created a safety risk. In fact, the Tweed runway is long enough for safe operations under any conditions under FAA rules and Tweed is attempting to lengthen it to accomodate planes traveling farther away, with more fuel on board.
As for the noise of aborted landings, it's unfortunate but it's rare and not a reason to undo the expansion of an airport the region needs.
'A very different experience'
Obviously Bradley, 55 miles away as the Boeing flies, is the preferred alternate location when fog socks in Tweed. To be clear, Bradley in no way stonewalled Avelo in these flights.
"We operate the airport, we don't operate airport services," said Kevin Dillon, executive director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, which operates Bradley and several other airports, but not Tweed. For that, he said, "a lot of airlines have reciprocal agreements."
One option for Avelo would be to have its Connecticut crews cleared and trained to work at Bradley in emergencies. That's underway, Levy said. "We welcome the opportunity to work with Avelo," Dillon added.
Better still, Avelo could add flights at Bradley — something that might happen eventually, Levy told me. "That is an option that would certainly allow us a little more flexibility...it's certainly a possibility," he said, especially when the airline launches international service.
For now, Levy and Avelo will dissect what happened. A deep-discount airline in limited locations has less ability to respond to disruptions than the giant carriers. Passengers know that as they pay less money. Still, Levy said, "Customers generally expect a very high level of treatment and care regardless of the cost."
I asked Levy what passengers would see if the same fog rolled in a year from now, or sooner.
"I would be very, very surprised if we saw ourselves diverting into an airport like Wilmington, particularly if it's in the evening and there's a chance of not being able to depart again," he said. "In terms of the communication and the handling of the issues with our customers, even if it's the same bad news...I absolutely expect and am confident that it will be a very different experience."
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