Landing Equipment for ORH

Story in newspaper yesterday of the MassPort meeting said:

• access road not needed to get good quality airlines
• upgrade in landing system will cost 30 million
• take 6-7 years

Here are my thoughts. 

1. Good thing the City of Worcester was not in the airport business anymore since there is no way in hell we could ever consdier taling something like this on.   MassPort can do this and it fits into their budget no problem.
2. Will do it.  They have to!!!  They bought the airport and they know to make ORH an airport that can actually improve MassPort's bottom line, they will have to do it.
3. How often would an upgrade in the landing system actuallly improve the take-off and landing percentage.   I can only think of a handful of times that a plane was diverted to another airport because it was not able to land at ORH.  I have e-mailed Andy Davis, the director at ORH, for the exact numbers.
4. What if I flew to Florida and on the way back was not able to land at ORH but was diverted to BOS. So what?  I go Boston already!!!
5. MassPort should merely plan for this and hire 3 or 4 buses to load luggage right into a bus and drive people to Boston from ORH or to ORH from Boston when the current landing equipment is not sufficient
6. Add $5 to each ticket sold for MassPort to cover these trips?

Was this good news yesterday?   On one hand since it seems people are finally starting to accept the fact it is not access road that has hurt Worcester but the lack of quality airlines.  MassPort will invest the money to upgrade the facility to attract good airlines and in the meantime we can still attract an airline like jetBlue with leisure service to Florida and the Caribbean.