Fly me to Asheville, please

It’s great to see JetBlue flying out of Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, expanding MHT’s arsenal to seven carriers, including Southwest, United, American, Sun Country, Breeze and Avelo.

Here’s my pitch to JetBlue: Offer nonstop flights to Asheville, North Carolina, from Manchester like it does out of Boston.

Asheville, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, is a cool, hip city home to brew pubs, a thriving arts and music scene and outdoor recreation that Queen City folks would love to visit. Most importantly, one of my sons lives nearby with his family, and I don’t get to see my two grandchildren there as often as I should.

I fly MHT whenever I can and love to support our local airport. It’s a quick 10-minute drive from my house and is big enough to get you where you need to go without the big-city hassle. I’ve been a JetBlue customer ever since my wife and I flew nonstop out of Boston to Aruba a few years ago. (We went back a second time for a re-do because we caught COVID on the first trip.) My JetBlue credit card sits in my wallet right next to the Southwest card, competing for points and the promise of more free flights to vacation getaways.

TSA workers monitor security lines at Ashville Regional Airport, which employs checkpoint scanners made by Analogic, a company that recently located to Salem, NH, from Peabody, Mass. (Photo by Mike Cote)

I weigh all the factors when I book Manchester vs. Boston, comparing costs, time lost on travel to Boston and time lost on layovers on MHT flights. Last year, while my mother’s health was in decline, I flew out of MHT several times to Sarasota on Southwest and American, which required connecting flights out of Baltimore or Charlotte, which could be a hassle due to weather delays. In June, my wife and I flew nonstop out of MHT to Chicago on Southwest for a wedding and vacation, wondering why we had never taken advantage of that route after we fell in love with the city.

For my recent trip to Asheville, I hopped on a bus to Boston, where I had booked a roundtrip, nonstop flight that departed on a Friday and returned on a Monday, not quite as long as I would have liked but convenient.

My son and his family live only about 45 minutes away from Asheville Regional Airport. Flying into bigger airports in the region — Charlotte, South Carolina; Knoxville, Tennessee; or Greenville, South Carolina (which Avelo offers nonstop from MHT) — means a car ride of 90 minutes to two hours, which can be exhausting after getting off a plane.

Like the routes the new discount airlines at MHT offer to hot spots in Florida and the Carolinas, the Asheville to Boston route appeared to be seasonal. When I had to reschedule a July Fourth weekend trip due to my son’s family catching COVID, I found my window extended only through August, when that long weekend roundtrip would go away and force me to stay for a week.

Flying into Asheville Regional Airport was worth the wait. It was like arriving at the North Carolina counterpart of MHT, albeit a smaller one with just a single 8,000-foot runway, compared to the two at MHT. Like Manchester, the airport has American, Delta, JetBlue, Sun Country 12 gates, but only six airlines: Allegiant, and United.

While smaller, Asheville is busier — the airport topped 2 million passengers last year for the second year in a row. Manchester’s traffic was 1.27 million last year, a slight decline from the year before and still below pre-pandemic numbers. But the first five months of this year MHT saw more passengers than 2024, with an increase of 9%.

A few months ago, Asheville finished construction of a new north terminal, with more food options and work space for business travelers, part of a $400 million renovation project. Even with its new digs, the airport still has that smallcity feel like Manchester, but that might change a bit as the upgrades continue.

MHT is about to embark on a master plan project that will set the course for the airport’s future. I hope Asheville plays into that. At the very least, it could give new MHT Airport Director Tom Malafronte a legitimate reason to book a trip to a fun place to hang out.

He and Asheville Airport Director Lew Bleiweis could compare notes on their checkpoint scanners. The X-ray units TSA uses at both airports are made by Analogic — a maker of airport security and medical equipment that moved from Peabody, Massachusetts, to Salem, NH, this year, bringing 500 jobs.