Sequester budget cuts to Massachusetts’s airports should not have a large impact on the number of flights through Logan International Airport, local airport officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration dealt with major budget-cuts as a result of the sequester, and five Massachusetts airports will lose their air traffic controllers. These budget-cuts will begin to affect the five airports, which include the Beverly Municipal Airport, New Bedford Regional Airport, Lawrence Municipal Airport, Worcester Regional Airport and Norwood Memorial Airport, starting next month.
The New Bedford Regional Airport is defunding its air traffic towers on May 5. The number of flights or quality of service should not change, said Thomas Vick, airport director of the New Bedford Regional Airport.
“I don’t anticipate any type of decline,” he said. “The controllers won’t be there, so we are hiring a number of employees to take the place of the air towers.”
Vick said the new system will be a hybrid of old and new methods of communicating with airplanes. Despite these changes, Boston University students should not be affected, particularly since they depart primarily from Logan
“Students who live in nearby areas, generally they drive,” said Saurabh Mahajan, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of advocacy for BU Student Government. “So smaller flights wouldn’t necessarily affect BU students, especially at the end of the year. That’s the time when we see their parents pick them up.”
Student Government has started a busing system to Logan to help students travel easier, Mahajan said.
He said the trial run of the program for spring break was based on a student survey that placed Logan Airport as the place of highest interest for students traveling during break.
“We’re looking at the option of including transportation to South Station as well as Logan,” Mahajan said. “This is definitely contingent to what the students want. If we find other places wanted by the students, we will look into including it. Right now we’re in the process of assessing the needs.”
However, easier travel to the airport does not make the experience inside the airport any smoother.
Katie Joseph, a CAS sophomore, said her flights have been delayed every time she has flown out of Logan Airport. Traveling from Logan to Indianapolis International Airport, Joseph has been stranded overnight multiple times.
“I’m going to have an even harder time flying out,” she said. “I experience delays every single time.”
Danielle Rives, a College of Fine Arts sophomore, said she flies to and from Logan at least three times a year, and is used to the process.
“I have gotten very accustomed to how I navigate through there because I use the same airline,” Rives said. “I have had a couple delays, which is quite a bit considering I have only been here for two years. I have had flights delayed two or three times for a significant amount of time.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
