From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made each time you are booking a flight, and if you live in the Rochester area, you may start by looking at options.

Departing from the Greater Rochester International Airport from Douglas.

But perhaps you can't find a direct flight to your destination, but maybe there's one available in, say, Buffalo or Syracuse Toronto.

Even so, maybe it's less expensive to drive to one of those cities and fly directly from maybe Buffalo or Toronto, for example.

Do you book that flight when passengers from one location travel somewhere else to fly?

It's what's known as airport leakage.

And according to the data, the Rochester airport loses more than 150,000 passengers to leakage each year, but 400 people a day.

It's something that State Senator Jeremy Cooney recently wrote about, with an appeal to Rochester Syrians to choose local when they book their flights.

That's because leakage has a direct impact on how airlines make choices about their routes.

And if a city has low passenger traffic, an airline will prioritize locations where traffic is more robust.

Senator Cooney argues that the high leakage rates for Rochester make adding new routes or additional nonstop service to or from Rochester a tough sell for the airlines, but maybe an indication that they should take a closer look.

So the bottom line is, if people in our region want to see more flights in and out of the Rochester airport, it's largely up to us.

Of course, it's also up to the senator.

He's working on.

We're going to talk about that.

He's the chair of the state's transportation committee, and he wants to see big changes to how we travel.

This hour we're talking about his ideas, some of the work he's doing regarding air travel.

We're even going to talk about vehicles a little this hour.

I've been waiting to talk about vertical takeoff and landing vehicles.

Every time I sit down with Senator Cooney, the phones go nuts.

And people have a lot to say.

Whether we're talking high speed rail or today, mostly on air travel.

You have a busy job, don't you, Senator?

Well, it's certainly a job that I think a lot of people care about, because they care about how they get from point A to point B, so we want to make it easier.

Well, that's what we're talking about today.

Welcome back, Senator Cooney.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for having me, Evan.

Andrew Moore Andy is the director of the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you for being here.

Well, thank you for the invitation.

I'm happy to be here.

How are things that at the airport.

So 2024 ended really well for Rochester in 2025.

Is off to a good start, particularly with the addition of Breeze Airways coming to Rochester in May.

So we're really excited about that.

Senator, let me start with you here.

You hinted at this issue the last time you were on the program, and in the intervening weeks and months, you've done a lot of work to better understand leakage, the data and what the airlines are saying about it.

Why don't you, first of all, describe the problem as you see it?

Sure.

Well, glad to be here with my friend Andy, because, Andy and his team run a wonderful airport.

And if you haven't flown out of the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester Airport recently, you've got to check it out.

It's the most efficient place.

And I fly a lot, and it's the most efficient airline.

And the airport experience.

so kudos to Andy and his team.

leakage is a term that the industry uses when passengers, airport passengers choose to fly out of a different area than their home airport.

So if you are like us and live here in Rochester, and you choose to fly out of, let's say, Buffalo or Syracuse, maybe you're choosing those other airports because there's a better flight option or a better price.

when you choose to fly out of those other airports, the airlines are tracking that, that we're moving and going to fly elsewhere.

That's like it.

So they're sort of flying out of rock or flying out of other airports and, you know, that's sends a message to the airline industry that, oh, that customer is being taken care of.

We don't need to add another direct flight out of the Frederick Douglas airport because they're getting their need met in Buffalo, or they're finding this flight in Syracuse.

So leakage is really about losing control of passengers who aren't choosing not to fly local.

Okay.

Make the case that this is, that there's something wrong with the market.

One of the things that comes to mind for me is, hey, you know, Rochester's airport, it's not the largest airport in the country.

and the market will decide where the flights go.

So if there is demand for.

For example, last month, I flew direct to Orlando on spirit, by the way.

Early going both ways.

That was nice.

so that it was great to have a direct flight, but there's plenty of times where if I want to go to a city in the Midwest city on the West Coast, I don't have a direct flight.

Not all the time.

And part of me thinks, well, isn't that just what the market is saying?

That if there were more me, more people wanted to fly direct to those markets or those cities, then the market would provide the flights.

And if there's not enough people who want to do it, that's just the market working.

And Senator, is what are you going against the market by trying to get more direct flights to an airport that currently doesn't have that many direct flights?

I don't believe so.

Let's let's quantify this problem.

So about 150,000 Rochester fans every year fly out of a non Rochester airport.

So I'm not talking about, you know, a regional airport in Penang.

I'm talking generally about Buffalo and Syracuse, maybe even, Toronto Pearson.

Right.

So, that's a lot of people.

And if we had 150,000 people flying out of Rochester, that would send a message to the airlines that, wow, there's a demand.

There's a market demand for more direct flights.

Now, we have large employers here, whether we're talking about the University of Rochester or maybe some of a new companies that are that are locating in the Finger Lakes region.

If their employees were flying out of Rochester for business travel or for leisure travel, right, that would again, incentivize the airlines to say, oh, well, we should offer more direct flights.

And we have a couple of destinations that you mentioned.

You know, that leisure East Coast leisure market in Florida, we have a large population of Rochester, Koreans who have second homes in Florida.

So they're flying back and forth.

but it's also a need.

I talked to the greater Rochester, Chamber of Commerce, and Bob Duffy's been talking a lot about this for years.

You know, we had to go further west, right?

So opportunities in Denver, opportunities in Dallas, right there is not an easy way, generally speaking.

And Andy can correct me here to get directly from Rochester and Frederick Douglass to those destinations.

Or if it is, it's not it's not frequent.

And so what we want is to create those opportunities for travelers to fly out of Rochester, instead of having to get in their car and drive, you know, 45 to 55 minutes and then find parking and leave their car.

And then when their flight comes back, drive in the dark or drive in inclement weather, all the way back home to Rochester.

So let's make it easier for everyone by having them fly directly out of Rochester.

Is this an economic issue for the Rochester?

It absolutely is.

It's a quality of life factor, as is transportation.

You know, when I'm on the radio here talking about high speed rail, we talk about the opportunities that come around by having better connections so people could live in Rochester and work in New York City or go to Boston quicker or what have you.

I mean, I think the same thing for air travel, too.

People are looking to choose destinations that allow them to visit family or to do, business opportunities in a much easier way.

Time is valuable.

If we've learned anything from this pandemic, it is the value of time.

And so we want to make sure that people can get to their locations safely and efficiently.

And I think that means flying out of Rochester versus another airport.

Well, let me ask the director of Rochester Airport.

First of all, do you agree with the characterization made by the senator of the current situation?

absolutely.

He's, he's right on top of the issue in the senator.

And I talk about it quite frequently.

So, you know, demand drives air service, the community drives air service.

And as the senator was saying, when you have persons living in the Rochester, Monroe County area that should be flying out of Rochester that choose to fly out of New York City, and we lose around 60,000 passengers a year to the New York City airports.

That is not helping us get new service.

And so, absolutely, it has a major impact on what we see and what, future, nonstop direct flights will be out of Rochester, roughly 400 passengers a day.

That's multiple flights a day.

Do you have the infrastructure in place that if we'll talk in a moment about what the senator's hearing from, say, JetBlue?

But if an airline like a JetBlue said, all right, we want to add 1 to 3 flights a day, whatever the case is.

Do we have the infrastructure?

Do we have the space?

Do we have the ability to make that work?

We absolutely do.

We have 21 gates at the airport.

As it stands today, we just added our ninth airline with breeze coming into Rochester, starting with, starting in May.

They'll be starting their flights.

And so we do have room for expansion, which is good.

Avelo came in about a year and a half ago.

and they're up to five destinations now.

So the existing airlines I call them are incumbent airlines if they choose to add more non stops and and some are like southwest nonstop daily now going to Las Vegas.

They're just using those same gates that they already use.

They just time those flights.

So there's only one plane at the gate at each time.

Okay.

And let me also ask you how you see the market situation.

I think the senator made a pretty good case that says if you want to look at how the market works, if there wasn't leakage and there wasn't a ton of demand, then it wouldn't be reasonable to say to airlines, we need more flights here.

But if there are 400 people a day, 400 passengers a day, 150,000 a year going to the surrounding markets to find flights, why doesn't the JetBlue's of the world?

Why don't they say, hey, let's just make this easier.

Let's do more flights in Rochester.

I mean, why doesn't the market correct itself that way?

One of the reasons why is because we're not the only airport knocking on the doors of the airlines.

There's over 400 commercial service airports across the country.

Every single one of those airports thinks their market is the most important and should get more flights.

Sure.

Including us.

And so there's only so many aircraft.

There's only so many pilots, there's only so many flight attendants that the airlines have.

And they have to judiciously look around and see where they're going to make the most money and supply the needed flights that they think are going to be able to be filled and get seats filled in.

And as the senator was saying, you know, and I and I talked with County Executive Adam Barlow about this a lot, too.

You know, when people choose to fly out of another airport, Toronto, New York City, Buffalo, Syracuse, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, they are telling the airlines that the airlines do not need to invest in Rochester.

And that's really what the senators is honing in on, is just getting people to fly local, fly your hometown airport.

That's the best way that we will add more flights to our inventory.

Senator Cooney, you've reached out to JetBlue, among others.

So what have those conversations been like?

Sure.

Well, before I jump on the JetBlue, though, let me just kind of piggyback off of what Andy was saying, which is it's a little bit of a catch 22.

So we ask our Rochester neighbors, fly, fly out of Rochester, fly to the Frederick Douglas Airport.

but they say, well, I found a better flight option.

I can fly direct out of Buffalo.

And we say, well, but if you fly out of Rochester, you will get it will eventually get more direct flights, but they still need to fly.

They still need to get to their destination.

So it is a little bit of an investment.

And we recognize that.

But I think what we're hoping to accomplish today is to just educate listeners about how the process works.

From the airlines perspective, and to be intentional with how you make your flight decisions.

Because if we're thinking about flying locally, flying out of Rochester, that's really going to have that positive value for us.

So when I reached out to JetBlue, by the way, JetBlue being New York's kind of official airline, if you will, that they own the airline.

It's based here in New York State.

I said, you know, what I'm looking at is, the upstate market specifically.

We know that JetBlue, like so many airlines, struggled during the pandemic and now are finally, you know, getting to a more profitable standpoint and adding new locations.

But when they're adding new locations, they're not adding them in Rochester.

So let me get your listeners up an idea about that.

So there are 73 weekly flights to Boston, Fort Lauderdale, New York City, Orlando and West Palm Beach, flying on JetBlue from Buffalo.

And this summer, I think they're adding a nonstop flight to Los Angeles again, just from Buffalo in Syracuse to the east of us, there are 35 weekly flights to Boston, New York City and Orlando, and JetBlue.

Compare that to here in Rochester, where there are only 21 weekly flights, and they're on JetBlue and they're going to JFK, to New York City.

So, you know, we have opportunities here.

and I think some of the destinations that JetBlue actually already hubs to or travels to, are of great interest to Rochester.

So I specifically asked them to take a look at their expansion for the East Coast leisure market, and specifically Tampa Bay and West Palm Beach.

You know, say, well, why those locations in Florida of any location?

The answer is that based again, on the data, 120 people fly daily, daily between Rochester and Tampa.

I think it's like before, Andy, correct me if I'm wrong.

The fourth most popular destination.

Yep.

Out of the Douglas airport.

and I think only Southwest Airlines currently is servicing that area.

But Tampa is the highest kind of migration destination for Rochester.

I think over a thousand, people, moved to and from Tampa just last year alone.

so we have this is obviously an area that JetBlue already services.

So why are we not adding additional flights directly to those areas here in Rochester, especially when there is market demand for it?

So we want to, you know, excuse the pun, we want to put it on their radar.

we want it to them to know that we are interested and we have heard back from JetBlue.

obviously no decisions have been made yet.

And we would work obviously closely with County Executive Adam Bello, as well as Andy and his team.

but the idea would be, as they're doing their planning, which is for next year, they're called the route planning team.

Please consider Rochester based on our numbers and our market demand.

And I think we're making a pretty compelling case, to get those additional destinations.

To your point about how long this would take, even if they greenlight, this does not happen next month here.

So if if it's going to happen next year, that decision starts to be made pretty soon, doesn't it?

That's right.

Because they're going to have to make, all the labor and employment decisions to make sure they have the staff to to man to aircrafts.

And they want to make sure that we have, you know, the marketing that's done in advance to sell the tickets.

that doesn't just happen overnight.

but the good news is, is we have this beautiful facility that has the infrastructure already built, as Andy said, that is ready to take these flights so that when they have, a jet that's ready to fly from Rochester directly to, let's say West Palm Beach, all they have to do is pull up and we'll be ready.

Are they listening to you?

I mean, you've got a little more juice.

Now as the chair of the Transportation Commission, I certainly hope so.

I want them to be successful all across New York State.

But there's no place like home.

And I'll let them know that.

Now, before I get some feedback, listeners, as we talk about transportation, travel, the state of the airport, the direct flights and more this hour with Senator Jeremy Cooney, who is chair of the state's transportation committee, and with Andy Moore, who is the director of the airport.

Andrew is director of the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport.

You can call the program toll free.

It's 844295 talk.

It's toll free, 84429582552636.

And if you call from Rochester 2639994, email the program connections at KCI.

Dawg, I'm looking at a note about Breeze Airways.

I don't really know.

It breezes.

I'm old enough to think like there's just United and Continental and American.

I mean, there's a subsidiary ease and but there's an announcement about new flights coming and breeze is the airway.

What is breeze?

And so breeze is an up and coming airline.

It's considered an ultra low cost carrier.

They started about 4 or 5 years ago.

and they're growing rapidly.

They're one of the fastest growing airlines domestically in the United States today.

And we've been working with, with breeze to try to get them into Rochester, for over three years now.

certainly with the county executive and the state senators support, we were able to secure them coming in, offering, nonstop flights to Charleston and Raleigh Durham starting in May.

The former CEO of JetBlue, who does have some connection to New York State, is now the CEO of Breeze Airways.

Okay, so those are the new flights.

I'm looking at the schedule here again.

Charleston starting May 8th, Raleigh, Durham May 9th, New Orleans and more to Orlando.

Okay.

All right.

you expect those to be popular flights?

Yeah, absolutely I do that.

Charleston was, one of our top leisure destinations that was unserved.

Las Vegas was the first, and obviously southwest is now doing daily nine stops there.

and then Charleston was our second.

So we feel that it's going to be well received by the, the travelers.

And how many individual cities does Rochester fly direct to?

Right now we're at 23 cities, nine airlines going to 23 destinations nonstop, ideally in 2 to 5 years.

We're at more like 2530 hopefully.

Yeah.

Absolutely reasonable.

Okay.

All right.

let me get some feedback from listeners.

Keith and Victor first on the phone.

Hi, Keith.

Go ahead.

Evan, very interesting show.

I just flew back Saturday from Vegas.

left on a Tuesday, came back on a Saturday, and it was, $972 round trip ticket out of Rochester via southwest.

it was problem fleet free.

Everything was fine.

I had also just bought roundtrip tickets from Toronto to Montego Bay.

Roundtrip and less than $500 a ticket.

we have flown probably a dozen times, maybe 13 times internationally in the last six and a half years and all but one time out of Montreal and all the remaining out of Toronto.

Well, we always go up the day before, we use the points from our Marriott card that we use to buy the tickets to get the free Marriott room for the night before.

So you're not pressed to travel up there on the day of the flight.

And the other advantage is we buy the tickets and we pay.

We buy them with Canadian dollars, but we pay for them with American dollars.

So we actually get a little bit better because of, I think it's like $1.33, conversion now.

So the Rochester airport's beautiful.

It was fantastic.

No problems getting in and out for my flight to Vegas Tuesday a week ago Tuesday, but $972.

I probably could have gotten it cheaper by flying.

And I won't fly the really the frontier or the, sure.

or the other one because it's they're just uncomfortable.

And we flown those before and, it was fine, but I could probably get the cheaper if I had gone to Chicago.

Sure.

Okay.

I mean, I flew to Orlando, I did the Orlando one.

I had to go Rochester to Chicago.

Chicago to Orlando.

Let me just jump in here, Keith.

So there's a lot there.

And I'm going to let Andy, the director of the airport, respond whatever you like there.

Go ahead Andy.

Yeah.

So I mean, life's about choices.

And you know, the passenger here is very fortunate to have multiple choices of of airports to go through.

I just want to point out, you know, when we talk about Buffalo, almost 40% of the Buffalo passenger are the Canadian travelers.

Buffalo is twice the size of Rochester.

So they're going to have twice the amount of options, you know, twice the amount of availability to go to different destinations.

We don't enjoy 40% of our travelers being Canadians.

Pearson understands that.

So Pearson's pricing their tickets to try to keep those travelers not to go to Buffalo and to go to Pearson.

So that's why you get airfare lower and Pearson.

And then it really depends, you know, on what's going on in that city, too.

I mean, there could have been a huge convention going on in Las Vegas or in Orlando that upticks, the ticket prices, depending on the time of year, depending on school breaks.

So there is a lot of different factors that the airlines put into, pricing.

The airport has nothing to do with pricing tickets.

I know that's sometimes confusing to people, but we have absolutely nothing to do with pricing of airfare on any of the airlines.

So there's multiple different factors and why you see a little higher airfare out of Rochester than you would, out of, let's say, Toronto or Buffalo, depending on where you're going in the time of year.

But certainly understand that it at certain times, you know, the airfares are going to be cheaper elsewhere.

Senator, I just wanted to add something in, for Keith.

I think international flights are always kind of a, you know, a little bit of a different animal here because obviously we don't have the capability in terms of our infrastructure to have, some of the large international flights that we see coming out of Toronto, Pearson, for example.

So for those for those flights, Keith, I hope that you'll jump on high speed rail and go directly to Toronto and fly out of Dallas.

But for your other flights, domestic, we hope that you'll still choose Rock.

I will say, that the other factor, in addition to the dynamic pricing model that Andy was talking about, is also kind of the quality experience that you want.

you know, as someone who flies out of New York City, in fact, I'm getting on a flight out of Rochester in just a couple of hours to fly down to do some business in New York City.

I am dreading it already, because I know it's going to be a bear to get out of the JFK airport complex.

They're going to be coming back.

Well, just to get it, just to get out of here or to get into Manhattan, it's just going to be an absolute mess because they're doing some wonderful infrastructure investments.

But I just, you know, change the experience.

Whereas right now, with some of the money that we've invested from New York State, our parking system has been it's just the best, at the airport to be able to pull into the garage to know what spots are open, to be able to park and to walk over to the, desk.

A ticketing desk or check your luggage.

All right.

We're talking like 15, 20 minutes.

I mean, I'm talking about 15, 20 minutes just to walk from the, you know, air train to to the gate.

I mean, it's it's going to be a long time in New York City.

So I guess the point of this, you have a small family and you're taking up taking a Florida vacation.

It's going to be so much nicer to fly out of your Rochester airport than they have to get everyone in the car and drive them to a different airport and figure out where to park and navigate your way around an unfamiliar airport.

It's just, you know, let let that factor into your travel making decisions.

we've got a lot of feedback to share.

Robert and Webster next on the phone.

Hi, Robert.

Go ahead.

Hi.

Thank you.

Erin.

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Thank you.

I love your airport.

I've been here, and I have over a million miles on two different airlines accumulated over time.

So I've.

I've done a bit of travel, but, you keep calling Rochester International.

I'm told that you have customs, officers on staff.

And so you have the infrastructure.

And you used to have a flight from here to Toronto so that we could make international connections, without any difficulty at all, at very reasonable prices.

But it isn't any more any chance of getting an international connection.

And that used to come in the morning round, turnaround.

And, any chance we could get up a turnaround up to Toronto, and, be able to connect on the international side?

It would be wonderful.

And it really would allow you to call Rochester an international airport.

But I'm not aware of any international flights at this point.

Would, but certainly would welcome them.

Okay, Robert.

Thank you.

Andy.

So the international designation is decided by is based on the capabilities of customs.

It's not decided by whether or not you have an international flight.

We have 350 to 400 general aviation, corporate international flights every year.

So the customs presence is presence is pretty robust in Rochester.

What the gentleman was saying and I, I agree, I was at the Rochester in 2018 when Air Canada, laughed.

They also laughed Syracuse.

And they laughed, I think Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at the same time.

they were providing 2 to 3 flights a day to Toronto.

since then, you know, working with the senator, working with the county executive, I've met with WestJet, which is another big Canadian airline, met with Air Canada again to talk about reestablishing service not only, potentially back to Toronto, but also up to Montreal, Ottawa, and other cities like that.

So it is on our radar.

but I was very, very it was very unfortunate to see Air Canada leave.

It wasn't just Rochester that they left.

They left other New York and Pennsylvania markets.

got a couple of questions from listeners.

and I'll let both of our guests when where they feel like it's appropriate.

On the subject of safety and on the subject of any possible FAA cuts and air traffic control.

so I want to start with a specific question for Andy.

More.

The director of the airport, we obviously saw the tragic crash a month ago, the first commercial, deadly commercial airline crash since Clarence, 2009, 16 years.

We saw the incident on the airport at Pearson on the runway at Pearson, with the plane turning upside down.

No one killed in that.

you know, certainly a very kind of grim situation, but nobody killed there.

We saw the two planes on the runway.

O'Hare kind of, avoiding each other, and it looked like a scary situation.

They handled it.

I want to ask you about if this affects booking at all.

And I told Andy before the program began that I'm going to sound like I'm doing PR for the airline industry, but it is so much safer to fly than to travel.

to any anything else.

I mean, it's amazing how much safer it is to fly than drive, but a crash is high profile on the news all the time.

It's on people's top of mind, and I'm not immune to feeling uneasy at times.

Just because, you know you're driving a car, you feel like you're in control.

When you're on an airplane, you're not in control.

It the safety record aside, which is phenomenal.

What did you say?

45,000 flights a day in this country?

Yes, 45,000 flights a day in this country.

Are people booking less in the last month based on some of these incidents, are you seeing any impact on business?

No, I'm not seeing it.

And I've I've spoken with the senator and the county executive at length on this issue because they were concerned about it, too.

And, and some of our aviation partners, I'm a member of a big national association and the board of directors of the New York State Association.

We are not seeing any decrease in numbers of people booking tickets or flying due to those accidents.

And Evan, you said it perfectly.

I mean, there's there's up to 45,000 flights a day domestically in the United States.

At any one given time.

There's more than 5000 aircraft in the air.

And you don't see these events happening on a daily basis like you see automobile accidents.

And it's fortunate that it doesn't.

So, aviation and flying is by far the the safest form of transportation.

And I'm just going to go on a little story here.

I remember about two years ago, flying back from Orlando with my family on southwest, nonstop from Southwest to Orlando, I might add.

And the pilot, when we landed in Rochester, you know, they do their thanking everybody for choosing southwest.

You know, you're in Rochester.

And he said, just please remember the safest part of your journey today has now ended.

So it's just a reminder that even the pilots believe that flying continues to be a safe form of transportation.

One other note on this before I turn to the Senator and it is Andy doesn't have a political job.

This we're not going to ask Andy about politics.

I mean, Andy's got to exist in a world that has people of all political backgrounds and and so that would not be fair.

The senator can talk about whatever he wants, but that.

But, Andy, let me ask you, are you concerned at all about any possible safety issues?

Is there anything on your radar that would say, hey, we're we're watching this because the safety record outstanding industrywide, but I wouldn't want to see Xyzzy or anything like that going on.

So we have a fantastic safety record in Rochester.

I'm in very close contact with our air traffic control.

In fact, Senator Cooney and County Executive Bello have both been up and visiting with air traffic control.

which is great to see.

And, no, I mean, I'm, I'm not concerned about it one bit.

And I think my colleagues at airports across New York State just met with them on Monday.

And Albany and colleagues in the associations I belong with across the country all feel the same way that that aviation is safe.

Do things happen?

I was going to say a swear word there.

Does you know what happened?

Yeah, yeah it does.

It's unfortunate, but you don't see that every single day.

And let's not forget, I mean, there's 45,000 flights a day just in the United States.

If you look at the entire world, it's up over 100,000 flights across the world.

So and you're not seeing these types of events happening on a daily basis.

Senator Cooney, are you concerned with anything that's happening in Washington that would lead to less safety in the industry?

Well, I don't think safety is a as a political issue or certainly a Partizan issue.

I think every administration, certainly wants to see passengers get from their destination safely.

even Andy mentioned that, I have an opportunity to go up into the air traffic controllers tower, which was a one of those really cool experiences in public service.

When you get to see behind the scenes and these these amazing individuals are are really working hard.

But the pressure on them to, to get this right, I mean, these, these folks are, are trained, experienced, committed to doing their work and keeping us safe.

And I feel actually even more confident now as an air passenger, knowing that they're the faces behind our safety.

But when we were up in the tower, I was asking a few of them.

This was, prior to the election.

I said, you know, what are your biggest challenges?

what are you facing?

What?

You know, is it a technology issue?

And and really, it was.

We just need more of us people that are retiring that doesn't have anything to do with politics.

It's just the nature of the workforce.

Just as if you were talking about a company.

And so they were looking for new folks to go through the FAA training protocol.

and you know, that way they would have people ready to go in our air towers here in Rochester, but all across the country.

So it does concern me when we talk about some of the new administration's cuts to the federal workforce.

we should be hiring more employees at the FAA.

not laying them off, which is what's happening.

and this is just.

I can be political here, but, you know, I think this is just one example of how, the talk around efficiency in Washington doesn't always translate to meet the need of safety.

And, and really just air travel.

That is a business.

for the rest of the country.

And so I am concerned, we, we should be getting more people the opportunity to work in the FAA to get to training.

so, so that there are current employees can pass along this information to keep us all safe and continuing to be, healthy air passengers.

All right, one other note for the senator.

And then what we're going to do is, Laurie in North Carolina will take your call after the break.

I've got more emails.

We got to squeeze in a lot.

Here.

You come more often, Senator.

You always light up our response here.

Senator, literally less than 24 hours after the crash last month, the president blamed die for it.

Do you see any evidence that die has caused an issue in air safety?

Absolutely not that.

It's just the most reckless statement to make.

It's insulting.

It's wrong, it's inaccurate.

and it it really does a disservice to the entire industry, to the entire, federal workforce, to be able to, to point blame on a terrible tragedy where Americans lost their lives and something that has nothing to do with, the safety and the procedures and, and and quite frankly, what actually happened, in Washington.

look, this is where I get a little bit on my political high horse here, but the part of the role of being the president of the United States is that you're the messenger, for our country.

And at a time when Americans needed to feel comforted, that, that not only for the loss of their loved ones and friends and family members, but also needed to feel reassurance about the safety that does exists in our airways.

The Andy just talked about, he chose to to point blame and and get a political hit.

That's not leadership period.

And so, you know, again, it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican, leadership is doing what's right for the for the country leadership is trying to find solutions so that these types of accidents, don't ever happen again.

leadership is making sure that the people who are most harmed by the accident feel comfort in a time of deep sorrow and grief.

and, I hope that he can learn from this experience.

You seem a little angry by it.

Well, I mean, I only have a few more minutes.

I mean, show is actually pretty animated, right?

it's personal.

Right?

As Americans, it's personal.

Right?

And as someone who, loves transportation, who believes in investing public dollars into mass transportation, not only for the convenience factor that we've talked about a little bit today, but for the business growth opportunities, the environmental impact.

right.

We need to be investing more money, federal dollars, state dollars into public transportation.

And if we start to lose the confidence of our citizens, then that really endangers that plan.

So we're going to do everything we can at the New York State level to make sure that we continue to invest in our regional airports, like the Frederick Douglas Greater Rochester Airport, to make sure that Rochester Koreans and New Yorkers have access to world class travel.

All right.

We've got to get a short break.

We're coming right back with Senator Jeremy Cooney, Andy Moore, the director of Rochester's airport.

And your feedback on the other side of this only break.

Coming up in our second hour, we sit down with a philosopher who has some unusual ideas about who deserves to be successful and who doesn't.

Frankly, Carla, Felicia has some unusual ideas about a lot of things, including reincarnation or the idea that maybe this world is a divine creation by a superintelligence.

But next hour we focus on success, ethics, morality, hard work, and more.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson and this is Laurie in north chilly on the phone next.

Hi Laurie.

Go ahead.

Hi, Evan.

I just wanted to say that we recently my family and I took a trip, to Aruba, and, yeah, we're not going to get a direct flight from here or Buffalo, but it was cheaper to go to Buffalo.

And so that's why we did that.

Okay, so what you're saying is it wasn't about the direct flight.

It was just all about the price.

There.

Yes it was.

It was all about the price.

Same airline.

southwest.

And they were, you know, great flights, but, it was simply cheaper.

There were eight of us and it was cheaper to go out of Buffalo than stay here in Rochester.

Yeah.

Laurie, I appreciate that.

And there's a number of emails on the subject.

So do you want to hit that again and why that may happen?

Yeah.

I mean the simple truth is Buffalo, it's apples and oranges with buffalo compared to Rochester.

Buffalo is twice the size.

They have more airlines.

They have more passengers, they have more demand.

And when you have that scenario, you're going to have more competition.

And what does more competition mean?

It means lower prices.

And so perfect example is like Orlando.

We have two airlines that fly Orlando nonstop.

Buffalo has three, but Buffalo has between 6 and 7 daily non stops to Orlando.

And so they're going to price those individual flights in order to fill those seats.

Which means more competition, cheaper seats less cost.

And we just don't have the passenger volumes to compete with that.

And that's just that's just the honest truth.

It's they're twice the size 40% of their travelers are Canadians that do not bypass Buffalo and come to Rochester.

If you took away that 40% Canadian traveler and you took away half of what, half of the Rochester Greens that fly out of Buffalo, you'd have the same size airport as Rochester.

All right.

Matt emails the program.

Matt says, as a frequent traveler out of Rochester, I would appreciate more root variety when this topic comes up.

Flying out of Rochester by choice.

I greatly dislike the tone or approach regarding what is basically the lack of variety of airlines and routes being Rochester fault.

Stop with the shaming of people who must find the best fare.

So, Senator, do you want to clarify some of your ideas about because Senator Cooney was saying earlier this hour that if you can make the choice not to go to Buffalo or Pearson, Toronto or Syracuse, you'd love to see more people do that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And to Matt's point, we're not trying to to shame anyone.

We just want you to be, intentional with your decision making.

And so if you do want to see more flights, and I think probably Matt and I'm sure Laurie would like to see more direct flights out of Rochester, hopefully at a competitive price, as we just talked about.

Then, you know, the way to do that is to show the demand, right?

And it's to start flying more out of our local airport again, the 150, the 150,000 passengers who don't fly out of Rochester, and use, Syracuse or Buffalo.

That's just a staggering number.

When you think about our overall population just in Monroe County alone.

Right.

Just, a little bit north of 750,000 people.

So if we were able to add an additional 150,000 passengers out of Rochester, that would incentivize additional airlines, to fly out of Rochester, and then that adds to the competition that Andy was just talking about to get those prices to be lower.

So it's not shame on you.

If you fly out of a different airport.

We we all have to make our financial decisions that are best for our time and for our families.

I respect that, but we just want you to be aware that we have the opportunity to change the dynamic with our airline partners.

If we can show that increased demand out of Rochester.

So again, it's back what I said before, Matt, it's a little bit of a catch 22.

We know it's harder to make that choice for Rochester, but if let's say if it's a price factor, if it's $15 more to fly out of Buffalo, you know, maybe choose that.

I'm sorry, $15 less.

Excuse me to fly out of Buffalo, maybe choose that Rochester flight because I think you can justify the savings by not having to pay for parking or not having to worry about gas costs and things like that.

But also, you know that you're going to support local just the same way that we all try to encourage people during the holidays to shop locally.

We're encouraging people to just be knowledgeable and to fly locally when it makes sense for them.

All right.

Corey Rice, to say thank you for the program today.

I appreciate the senator's desire to have more routes for JetBlue out of Rochester.

However, JetBlue did have a direct flight out of Rochester to Orlando back in the early 2000.

JetBlue pulled that route and kept it in Buffalo and Syracuse, presumably due to demand.

I don't know this history.

Andy can maybe jump in, but, Corey goes on to say, what makes the senator think this would work?

Again, when there are cheaper flights on other airlines, industry and jobs will bring more routes to Rochester.

Look at what happened in Madison, Wisconsin as far as flights go.

That's from Corey.

So first of all, the history, how do you do on the history?

So he was pretty accurate with that.

JetBlue is flying nonstop to Orlando out of Rochester.

Southwest came in to Rochester, offered the non stops.

JetBlue didn't want to be a competing airline for the passenger going to Orlando when Syracuse had no non stops to Orlando at that time.

So then they started the Syracuse Nonstop Orlando service.

as southwest grew in their Orlando service out of Rochester.

Okay.

And Senator, so do you think he's saying do you think there's demand?

Is this the right situation to try to revive that kind of a route?

No, I think it is, because what we're seeing is other smaller metropolitan areas.

doing a route expansion.

And I think that Rochester is ripe to do so.

I think the caller or the emailer was correct in the sense that a lot of times the jobs dictate, the jobs in the region, dictate the opportunity, because there's more people coming to to fly, whether for business or choosing to locate here.

So Micron's a great example, right?

So micron is going to be probably the largest employer in our greater upstate region that's announced that they're coming, thousands and thousands of jobs.

Right.

And there's going to be in Rochester impact.

By the way, people are going to be living in Rochester and working at Micron and Edwards vacuums, which is coming to the Batavia area a little closer to Rochester.

That's also going to be a pretty large employer.

So I think as we start to see a population increase in our greater Rochester region, the Finger Lakes region, there will be, an opportunity to offer more of these airlines.

One of the earlier callers also talked about their experience with some of the ultra low cost carriers.

Right.

Saying, well, I choose not to fly on that carrier because I don't feel as comfortable.

That's fine.

That's a personal preference.

We all have our choices.

you know, I fly JetBlue when I can because I have a good experience in them.

I like their staff, and I think it's comfortable seats and I can watch, CNN on the, on the way down to New York City.

Right.

That's a, that's a consumer choice, that I'm making.

Right.

So we want to have more options on JetBlue specifically because that's a different type of carrier than, a frontier or a different airline.

and so again, we just want more options for Rochester to choose and whatever's best for their family, they'll make that decision.

All right Robert in Fairport on the phone next.

Hey, Robert.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Interesting to discussion.

I flew out of, Pearson in Toronto in mid-January, to go to the Caribbean.

I'll tell you two reasons why you want to fly direct.

The first reason is if you've ever connected out of Newark or Miami and had that experience of barely making the connecting flight and potentially risking missing half of your trip, that's, that's one big reason, because a lot of these airlines are flying sort of so full now that if you have a group of like 3 or 4 people, you're not all going to make it and you may not all make it tomorrow.

The other reason is customs.

If you've ever been through customs at an airport like Miami, you will do anything to avoid that.

You, Robert.

Thank you.

Andy.

how are we doing on, how on time is the Rochester flight schedule?

So we are extremely well compared to our counterparts.

across the country, we're classified as a small hub airport.

There's roughly about 73 small fact check you.

That's not spin.

No, we're ahead of the curve.

Nope, nope.

We do very well on our on time departures.

And that's a credit to the airport team, the airfield team out there that are, you know, doing snow and ice removal and do a fantastic job of doing that.

I got to talk about VTL.

So one other quick question for Senator Cooney.

Do you think by the end of this year, it's realistic to say you'd love to have an announcement from a JetBlue on expanded flights in Rochester?

I mean, is, is that on the mind?

Do you have a time frame in your mind on this?

Oh, that would make a great holiday gift for all of us, wouldn't it?

so we'll we'll continue that to aggressive.

I don't think so.

I look, look, I'm an aggressive guy.

Like we we've made the ask.

I think we made a compelling argument based on the market demand here in Rochester that already exists.

These are not pie in the sky promises.

We have people here who want to get to destinations, to locations that they're already going to.

So I think we made a very reasonable ask.

And we're going to, you know, continue to utilize the, the role that I have on the state transportation, role for the Senate, to be able to push on that a little bit more.

I do want to make one point that on the connection side.

Yeah.

this is something I always love, spending time with.

And because I learn more about our Rochester airport, if you're like me, you wonder, why the heck do we always have these flights that are so early in the morning or so late at night?

I don't want to have to get up at 3:00 in the morning to get to the airport.

Well, the reason why and Andy educated this to me is because of those connections, right?

We want to get you to a JFK or a Newark or, you know, another hub airport like Philadelphia, you know, so that you can get to your final destination if you are taking so you're not running up against the clock and and running down one of those home alone type seats.

No running down the terminal.

Been there, done so.

So that's why we have those flights early in the morning and later at night.

it's not just to inconvenience you.

There is a way that we're trying to make you successful in getting to your various destination.

All right, I'm looking at pictures of these vehicles.

You got to tell me a little bit more about this, Senator.

So, Vito stands for what?

Vertical takeoff and landing vehicles.

Okay.

And so are we actually seeing people use this more?

What is this?

So when you think of verticals or vertical takeoff and landing, a lot of times people think about it in the military context because you have seen some use there.

there's some large companies like Bata who are actually testing these types of aircrafts, in other airports, like, I pick up in Plattsburgh, right.

And, they've got a testing facility and I it's harder to describe over radio, but I encourage your listeners to just Google Vtol.

Vtol class, and, you know, plug it into your search engine, go to the Google image search, and see what these kind of aircraft look like.

I think the key takeaways you don't need a runway, right.

So that you literally are vertically taking like a helicopter.

Like a helicopter.

Right.

but it's all electric, generally speaking.

So you don't have, the, environmental impact that our regional jets would have.

And there's a speed issue, right?

It can go go pretty quicker, but it's not maybe a decent thing.

You're not going to take a veto to London, right.

Where would you take it.

So I'm looking at this technology as a good application for upstate travel.

Right.

So let's say not just private travel.

Is this not all.

So right now it's not used for passengers at all.

Right.

It's not approved by the FAA.

It's a federal.

Do you think in the future it could be I think it's going to very aggressively move to that way.

In fact, I think here's a here's a consequence of of of the Trump administration.

Right.

They are much more apt to move technology, hopefully with an eye to safety.

But they are much more apt to move technology and investments just based on the people who are running those organizations now.

Right.

You've got a tech expert and and Elon Musk spending a lot of time in the white House right now.

Right.

And so, these decisions are not just kind of fringe companies.

Boeing has an interest in this type of technology.

And again, it the key is to integrate it within our existing airport system because we have the infrastructure already in place.

So you might you might not need a runway, but you still need that traffic control tower to control the air traffic.

Right.

This is not the Jetsons where we're just going to get into our personal high speed aircraft and just fly whatever we want to go.

You have to have that air traffic control service, especially in higher volume traffic agencies.

And you could see people get tickets.

I mean, I'm, I'm looking at these things, just in a Google search.

They're not huge.

How many people can fly in a retail?

So I've seen, some models between 6 and 8.

I've seen some that are just two.

so it kind of really depends on where you go.

I think the kind of closest model you're trying to get your head around this technology is something like blade.

You might have heard about that.

It's a private, helicopter service that that shot flies from airports into urban destinations.

So more to come.

We have to make the investments in airports like the Frederick Douglas, Greater Rochester Airport and other regional airports charging infrastructure, etc., so that we're ready to take advantage of this travel when it comes.

You'd be you think this is coming.

So you would be surprised if we don't see commercial Vtol travel by wind.

I think we're going to see Vtol travel before we see high speed rail in New York State.

Okay, two years away, three years away.

Too fast, let's say two years.

And take a look at it.

Wow.

This is, I mean, it's always so interesting talking to Senator Cooney, who's the chair of the Transportation committee.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for helping door.

Come back whenever you want here, because listeners want to hear from you and Andy Moore, very busy guy, the director of the airport.

Great having you.

You see how much interest there is?

Thank you for being here.

You're welcome.

Thank you for having more connections coming up.

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