Andrew Levy, the founder of Avelo, was in New Haven Friday to celebrate the one millionth passenger to fly through Tweed.
It was a milestone flight for Avelo Friday. The airline says it flew its one millionth passenger.
That includes those flying in and out of Tweed since its first take off 16 months ago.
To celebrate, Avelo’s founder surprised everyone hopping aboard a Fort Myers flight with a free roundtrip ticket for a future adventure.
“Our mission at Avelo is to inspire travel and we feel like this is a great proof point of us being able to do that by saving customers time and money, making it easy for people to get to the places that they want to go,” said Avelo founder and CEO Andrew Levy.
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Lots of local dignitaries attended the celebration at Tweed, touting the popularity of travel from New Haven and the creation of jobs, too.
Our NBC CT Responds team went to the celebration to question Levy, after we continue to get complaints from viewers about issues with the airline’s customer service.
Just this week, we once again heard from frustrated passengers when a flight from West Palm Beach to Tweed was diverted to Bradley Airport for a safety precaution.
NBC CT Responds
Passengers understood the need to divert for safety, but told us that they were left with little to no direction: Where to get their bags? How to get back to their cars? Would they get refunded?
One passenger told us it wasn’t until later that night when he learned the airline would reimburse for his transportation costs.
Last month, NBC CT Responds investigated some of the complaints we’ve received. As a result, Avelo’s head of communications promised the airline was making investments in communications and training of their crews, among other things.
At Friday's event, NBC CT Responds questioned Levy about this after the new complaints we heard this week.
“I would say that it’s a perpetual need to get better in that area without a doubt. And that is one of our, we have seven big strategic corporate priorities this year and that is absolutely one of them. Doing a much better job of managing when things don’t go the way we want them to go. I’d say that’s an area that needs a lot of improvement,” said Levy.
He wouldn’t go into specifics but says passengers should continue to see progress.
NBC CT Responds learned Friday that Avelo has recently hired a new director at Tweed who will help train crews, among other things.
