Cape Air met with the Wharf District Council this week to go over their proposed seaplane service connecting the Boston Harbor and New York City.
Currently, it takes about four hours to get to NYC from Boston. However, with Cape Air’s proposal the trip could be as short as an hour and 15 minutes. They are planning on using Cessna Caravan Amphibian planes that carry nine passengers at a time.
“We think this would be a great addition to the city,” said Cape Air CEO Dan Wolf.
It would operate during daytime hours only as pilots need to see the surface of the water to land. Cape Air conducted a sound study to see how it would impact Boston residents in the area and the results came up to be “minimal.”
“There will be no such thing as waking people up because of noise,” said Wolf. “One, we found that it isn’t that noisy. Two, we need the sunlight to fly.”
Flights would operate seven days a week.
Currently, Cape Air does not have a docking site in Boston. Wolf said they are currently working with the city to find a proper area for the planes to land. They do not have a timeline on when this will happen. They were hoping to start operating in the summer but that does not look like it is going to happen.
“We want to do this as soon as possible,” said Wolf.
Despite complaints about bringing in the community late in the process, Wolf said the company is doing their best to be transparent about the process and meet with neighborhood groups.
When they do finally launch, during the first initial season, there will be two flights a day in each direction. They are hoping to jump to four flights a day in each direction during their second season.
Patrons can buy tickets online. Tickets will be around $400 one way.
The Main Channel in the harbor is like the Southeast Expressway on a weekend day in the summer. How can this possibly work seven days a week, without clearing the channel for landings?
Also, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be a passenger on this plane. The Cessna Caravan has had 427 fatalities in 206 accidents, according to Wikipedia. It’s a single engine, single pilot plane.
Hope it works better than in Alaska. Of course, landing under the flights from Logan should work wonderfully. Yeah, Ketchikan ersus Logan , what’s the difference.
Sea planes have a lot of resistance to flight and have to take off into the wind in order to get lift. If the wind is out of the East that would mean taking off perpendicular to harbor boat traffic. This sounds like a very bad idea.
More ferries and water taxis plus tour boats plus leisure boats will already make the harbor traffic tough. Add sea planes and what could possibly go wrong? It might take nearly four hours bur the Amtrak Acela train from South Station to NYC Penn Station only costs $215 one way for business class seat and $248 for a first class seat instead of $400 for the Sea Plane