Tweed Airport Wins Runway Lawsuit

NEW HAVEN, CT — The U.S. Court of Appeals 2nd Circuit paved the way for Tweed New Haven Regional Airport to expand its main runway length, which could bring in additional airlines and service to new hotspot destinations. The court reversed a lower federal court’s decision.

The Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority along with the City of New Haven sought to invalidate a state statute that limited the runway’s length to 5,600 feet. The appeals court noted that Tweed’s runway is one of the shortest commercial airport runways in the country and that it lacked nonstop flights to Orlando, Boston, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta.

The state Attorney General office has the option to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The Office of the Attorney General is reviewing the decision of the Second Circuit and will determine whether it will file an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Samantha Norton, deputy communications director for the Attorney General’s office. “The State has 90 days to file such a request, should it elect to do so."

The state legislature passed a law in 2009 and since then the airport has had trouble convincing new airline services to provide service. Tweed contacted about 10 different airlines and none were interested in starting service at the airport. Lengthening the runway would allow larger aircraft to use the airport and would allow current aircraft to reduce or eliminate seating restrictions, appellate judges noted in their decision.

Tweed sued and argued that federal law preempted the state statute.

Appellate judges agreed that if every state were allowed to control the length of its airport runways then a congressional objective to establish uniform regulations would be invalid.

New Haven Mayor Toni Harp noted in a 2015 letter to the community that Tweed has the 12th largest catchment area population in the northeast, which is similar to airports in Albany and Harrisburg, but that its level of service was lower. Expanding the runway to 6,000 or 6,100 feet would open up possible destinations to Washington, Chicago and Florida.