What's the deal with ASA and ORH?

[zawillif]

I've heard ASA used to fly into ORH (Worcester, MA) frequently with CRJ-200s. It was before my time, but my understanding is that we cancelled service because of the 200's poor takeoff performance. ORH has a 7000' runway but it is frequently contaminated in the winter. I've also heard from several captains that that route was always extremely busy with lots of passengers both to and from ATL.

Has it ever come up that the 700 could be used into ORH with its much better takeoff performance? Sounds like pretty decent loads are possible with zero on-airport competition. Any thoughts? Correct me if im wrong with any of the info.

 

[wmuflyguy]

Talk to mother Delta, they decide when and where their feed flies too.

 

[nethan]

Unfortunatly nobody flies into ORH anymore. It used to have pretty good service from Delta, UsAir and I think CAL (and maybe others). A combination of not great loads and an airport that was built in a fog belt led to the demise of commercial service there. I can see somebody like Airtran going into there at somepoint but it is reall too close to PVD and BOS (and BDL for that matter) for most people to touch it. The sad part is that in order to get the commercial status the airport drove off all the GA traffic. Now, with the commercial traffic gone they are having problems attracting the GA traffic back from the fringe airports that they moved to.

 

[zawillif]

Yeah that does suck. I can think of other successful airports built in fog banks, ACK comes to mind first. But I guess ACK is a little bit more desireable destination than ORH.

 

[Titanium]

ORH is like a ghost town these days. I bet most people don't know that Worcester is actually neck and neck with Providence as New England's second largest city.

 

[CA1900]

What's killed Worcester is that Massport wants to absolutely gouge any airline that goes in there these days. Nevermind that it's earning no money as a ghost town. If we're going to pay Boston-level rent, we're just going to go to Boston. Which is what we're doing.

Fools...

 

[bailout]

I have never heard any such thing as 'poor performance' on why we dont go there anymore. Its no different than anywhere up in that area we go to. I did hear recently that ASA is actually looking to go back there this summer.

 

[zawillif]

Because of its location Worcester gets more snow than most places we go, def more than BOS, PVD, MHT or PWM. Maybe only BUF gets more. The poor performance I was talking about was the fact that we had to kick revenue passengers off frequently to meet the runway limited weight restriction. Just what some captains have told me. That would be great though if that rumor came true . . .

 

[filejw]

At one point ORH had 9 airlines. Add US AIR, NWA, Piedmont and Presidential to the list above.The biggest problem at ORH at that time was reliability because they only had an ILS to one R/W and it often had a tail wind.Massport eventually had an other ILS put in but everybody had left by then.

 

[Skyranger777]

"Welcome to Worcester, dolla twenty five please....."

Sorry, had to do it

 

[bailout]

Im sure kicking passengers has happened, but ive been there countless times in winter and never had an issue with weight. Ive heard it was more of a money issue with airport fees.