By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA — Although they won’t get to vote on the matter, the Town Council may be able to have some influence over Boutique Air’s decision on flight destinations out of Massena.

At a special meeting on Wednesday, Town Supervisor Steve O’Shaughnessy said Boutique officials told him they feel they “bit off more than they could chew” when offering Albany and Baltimore flights out of Massena. They want to scrap those routes, and fly to Boston. They have an affiliation with United Airlines for connecting flights.

“According to the statistics, the report we get every month, the Albany run is at 42 percent, less than half full,” O’Shaughnessy said. “They’re saying they believe they can get more going to Boston.”

He said he did not have the percentage for the Baltimore flight, but could look it up.

Boutique Air flights out of Massena are subsidized through the federal Essential Air Service (EAS) program. They will have to ask the Department of Transportation to alter their contract.

“We don’t make that decision, they do. They request,” O’Shaughnessy said. “If EAS is okay with it, they would ask us for a letter of support and that would be a deciding factor.

“From what I’ve read, they don’t get to go unless we support it.”

Several members of the public aired a variety of opinions on the proposed change.

Tina Corcoran, who is Massena Memorial Hospital’s director of public relations and planning, said they use the Albany and Baltimore flights as a selling point when recruiting new doctors.

“We can say ‘you have an airport you can fly into and get a connection in New York state,’” she told the board. “We use Massena airport a lot to get people in and out of here. It helps me and the hospital sell the community as a good place to come and settle.”

She also talked about personal experiences that she and her husband, John Corcoran, had flying to Logan International in Boston.

“If you are flying any other airline, you will have a tremendous delay. When you land, if [a connecting flight] is not United, you have to leave the building and take another bus and rego through TSA … it takes at least two hours to go through any time of day there,” she said. “I don’t think that’s a wise move for our community.”

Massena resident Gina Sn

“When the contract comes up … are you going to take into consideration that they’re backing out of doing two flights and doing just one flight now?” “It’s going to impact Massena. Do you know how much it’s going to impact Massena?” she said. “I think we can do better … This is affecting a lot of college parents, kids.”

Charles Raiti, a former town councilman, said he thinks they should keep the Albany destination.

“We have a Catholic school out here, a lot of people fly in from Albany and a lot of parents come in to see their children,” he said, warning those customers could go to Ogdensburg instead and take a Cape Air Albany flight. “That’s your competition.”

He said he is skeptical of Boutique’s claim that they are having trouble keeping planes going and coming from their two routes.

“You say Boutique is having trouble, they supposedly did their due diligence when they came here, so something’s fishy there,” he said, but later stated that he’s flown Boutique and was satisfied.

Two other people said they have family out of the area who regularly use the Baltimore flights to visit home, and they use the route to fly to their hometowns.

“The Baltimore which seemed like a strange connection at first, my fiancee her son lives in the Baltimore-Washington area, he comes up for more frequent visits,” Massena resident Jeff Stenwick said. “For us, three out of our four children have been able to take advantage of this without breaking the bank.”

He said his son had a problem in Albany and Boutique staff drove him to Massena so he could get home for the holidays.

“Their employees at the Albany desk, terminal there, went above and beyond to get my son home at Christmas time,” he said. “They themselves drove him up in the middle of the night to get him here and they had to be at work at 8 a.m.”

Mac Shoen said he has family in northern Virginia and he can quickly get down to see them on the Baltimore plane.

“That’s my advantage, but anyone who’s going to the Washington area, that to me is the way to go,” he said. “Boston, it doesn’t make sense for me to fly from Massena to Boston to Washington… I’ll probably drive to Watertown and end up going out of Watertown.

“Anyone going west is going to have to go an hour east and then an hour back again.”

O’Shaughnessy said anyone who couldn’t make the meeting but wants to submit comments can email them to the supervisor’s office.