After years of public haggling and back-room talks, Tweed New Haven Airport has a flight plan to launch its long-awaited expansion, powered by tens of millions of dollars from the state and a new traffic pattern that spreads the passenger vehicles in East Haven and New Haven.

The landmark “memorandum of understanding” between Avports, the airport operator; the two municipalities; and the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority is just that—a roadmap pointing the way toward final agreements for a new runway, passenger terminal, parking garage and roadways to and from Tweed. It’s not a final, binding deal, as a lot of pieces still need to come together.

It won’t come cheap for state taxpayers and it won’t happen without compromise on both sides of the growing airport.

But it’s a signed document, which the authority is set to (most likely) approve Wednesday night at a special meeting. And it ends, for the time being at least, a years-long stalemate that saw East Haven balk at an expansion we thought it supported five years ago in a splashy rollout on the airport grounds.

A lot has changed since that morning of May 6, 2021, as the world fought to escape the pandemic. The original plan called for a new terminal on the East Haven side with all passenger traffic entering and exiting through that town.

Under the latest thinking, the terminal plan remains in place with parking also on the east side. But traffic would enter on the East Haven side and exit in New Haven, around the north side of the runway, through the streets of the East Shore neighborhood.

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Gov. Ned Lamont, on hand that day, quipped that few if any large public projects happened without a state subsidy. This was going to be one, as Avports, which runs all or parts of 16 airports including Tweed and Westchester County Airport, agreed to carry the whole cost (except runway modernization by the Federal Aviation Administration) in exchange for 43 years of revenues from airlines, vendors and passengers.

Avports will still do all of that inside the airport perimeter. But, with Lamont on board, the state would pay:

• $40 million for a new public safety complex in East Haven.
• $5 million each to East Haven and New Haven for infrastructure.
• An increased annual payment in lieu of taxes for hosting a public facility (appropriately named PILOT) by more than $5 million a year in East Haven, rising with inflation.
• Increased PILOT of nearly $3 million a year in New Haven, also rising with inflation.

That sounds rich—$50 million plus $8 million a year from the state (on top of some flood remediation on a main East Haven thoroughfare that needs to happen anyway)—but it’s a low price considering the New Haven area, and the city especially, desperately needs a significant airport.

“Customers are voting with their ticket purchases every day,” New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said in a written release about the agreement. “And a new, modern, state-of-the-art terminal, along with proper roadways, traffic patterns, infrastructure, environmental protections, community considerations and governance structures are necessary to make this airport a success.”

That point about customers by Elicker was the key to his part of the agreement. Why would the city consent to receiving all of the exiting airport traffic in the latest plan, when the original design sealed off the East Shore neighborhood from customers using Tweed?

The answer is that Tweed is growing dramatically with or without the expansion and until the improvements happen, every vehicle in both directions passes through that neighborhood. In 2025, 739,000 passengers departed from Tweed, up well more than 20 percent from the year before as Avelo Airlines and Breeze Airways ply their discount routes.

By comparison, Bradley International Airport had 3.3 million passengers departing in 2025.

Estimates call for Tweed, which would have six airline gates, to top out at about 1.5 million departures after the expansion. If you’re doing the math, that’s 3 million trips. Yeah, the maximum number has grown since 2021. But guess what: A lot of that will happen anyway and without the expansion, no one wins—and no major airline will return to Tweed.

I first reported the likelihood of traffic flow through New Haven last November as Avports’ way to end the stalemate but I missed a major point: Yes, the cars would pass through streets not designed for such numbers, as happens now. But gone from New Haven will be idling vehicles as friends and family wait for arriving passengers; Uber and Lyft drivers waiting for fares; and Tweed passengers parking in the streets or being dropped off and walking in the gates.

The agreement calls for “a structured process for traffic mitigation” on both sides of the airport.

Other details of the agreement:

• Under the agreement, no approval is guaranteed, including the state money. The airport would have to follow each local, state and federal step just as it would without the agreement. That includes wetlands permits, state Department of Transportation traffic approvals and zoning among others, all with comments from the communities.
• East Haven has the right to have its zoning board and other town bodies approve or reject the main new terminal proposed for its side of the airport. That has been a quiet point of contention, with Avports claiming, probably correctly, that it didn’t need local zoning approval for a terminal at a federally regulated airport. But under CEO Marc Ricks, who joined Avports in mid-2025, the company gave in on that point for the sake of a deal—a large concession to Mayor Joseph Carfora.
• The route into and out of the airport would prevent vehicles (other than emergency) from passing through a residential neighborhood in East Haven directly adjacent to Tweed.
• The current entrance on the New Haven side would be maintained, but only for 450 parking spaces, mainly for employees and rental car companies.
• The existing, outdated terminal on the New Haven side would be used for offices, training and perhaps general aviation but no scheduled passenger traffic and no cargo or freight flights.
• East Haven agrees to abide by the pending decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals over the FAA’s 2023 finding that the expansion would have no significant environmental impact. The town and the nonprofit Save the Sound jointly appealed that finding to the federal courts. The agreement means East Haven would not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, slowing the expansion further. It does not bind Save the Sound.

The document is in essence an agreement to proceed, not a final handshake.

“While there is much more work to do, the agreement shows what we can accomplish when we roll up our sleeves and work collaboratively to find solutions,” Elicker said in the release.

Lamont, who most likely has the juice to gain legislative approval for the needed cash, called Tweed “a generational project that will help Connecticut ensure it has the modern infrastructure necessary to compete and thrive in a 21st-century economy.”

Carfora, the East Haven mayor, was less ebullient in his comments in a release.

“Our boards and commissions will act strictly within their fiduciary obligations to the Town and its residents, and will require that any project fully satisfies all applicable standards and protections before it is permitted to proceed,” Carfora said.

If he sounds pragmatic, that’s okay. It’s progress.

How politically sensitive have these talks been? Ricks, the Avports CEO, in the written release thanked Carfora, Elicker, Tweed Authority Chairman Robert Reed and one other figure—a powerful New Haven Democrat who is extremely close to Senate President Pro-Tem Martin Looney, an airport neighbor.

“Town Committee Chair Vin Mauro for his continued counsel,” Ricks wrote in the release.