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Old-fashioned seaplane service offers fliers the chance to reach city centers–and with a memorable landing alongside the skyline-for those willing to spend.

By Dawn Gilbertson

BOSTON – I’ve checked in for flights at tiny airports and mammoth hubs, but never at an oyster bar.
Until last week. Tailwind Air Flight 1257 to New York departs from Reel House Oyster Bar in the seaport district. The restaurant, with its $150 shellfish tower, is a fitting starting point for a seaplane voyage to New York that costs from $395 to $895 one way and lands in the East River, minutes from Midtown Manhattan.

Commercial flights are fast. But factor in tarmac delays, long security lines, plus traffic to and from the airport, and reaching your destination takes much longer. Seaplanes might offer a niche alternative for those who can afford more than a regular airline ticket but less than private flights, while delivering fliers closer to city centers.

Tiny Tailwind has been touting speedy, hassle-free service on the clogged travel route for nearly two years. Scheduled seaplane service is an anomaly in the Northeast but part of daily life in places like Seattle, Vancouver, British Columbia, and the universe of singer Jimmy Buffett. Co-founder and Chief Executive Alan Ram views seaplanes as forerunners to air taxis, but available now.

“It’s tried and true and it’s been around 100 years,” he says. “It’s away to get in and out of the city center without having to wait for some future technology.”
The scheduled flight time between the heart of Boston and New York on Tailwind’s eight- seat Cessna Caravan amphibious seaplanes: under 90 minutes. Anyone who’s taken a plane, train or automobile knows that this trip takes about four hours door to door on a good day.

A shortcut to New York

I booked my flight from Boston Harbor (BNH) to Manhattan (NYS) for $495, buying the ticket online a week out. That compares with airline fares starting at $180 one-way and Amtrak Acela fares of $176 for business class or $337 for first class. The Wall Street Journal paid for the trip and the company wasn’t notified of my plans.

The closest I came to either city’s major airports was when we taxied by Boston Logan and flew 1,500 feet over New York LaGuardia, down from a peak altitude of 8,000. There was no security line — Tailwind says it makes sure passengers aren’t on a no-fly list — no crowded gates and no snaking lines for a taxi. But also no Wi-Fi or drink service beyond a small, self-serve red Igloo Playmate cooler at the back of the plane stocked with free sodas and Nantucket canned cocktails.

The trip was quick, sometimes scenic but not stress-free. I fretted about the strict 20-pound luggage weight limit. The oyster bar was difficult to find because it’s new and not in navigation apps. And parts of the flight were bumpy enough that another passenger’s puppy puked.

Tailwind requires passengers to show up 10 minutes before departure. For flights out of Boston, it suggests arriving early to enjoy the oyster bar. I showed up an hour before my 2:45 p.m.departure and, like any self-respecting jet-setter, ordered the $48 oysters — four Wellfleet oysters topped with tuna crudo, creme fraiche and caviar. A giant yacht called Kisses was docked next door.

Boarding Time

My phone pinged just before 2 p.m. A text from Tailwind said the flight was leaving on time but would arrive 38 minutes late in Manhattan because of an unexpected stop in East Hampton,N.Y. It blamed “operational changes with our seaplane fleet.” The company has three seaplanes to cover its weekly schedule of about 108 flights, nearly one-quarter of them between New York and Boston. Other destinations include Nantucket, Mass., and Newport, R.I.

A Tailwind rep arrived at the restaurant about 20 minutes before departure, toting a clear plastic container with a hand scale and other items inside. She found me at the bar, checked my ID to match it with my reservation and weighed my carry-on. I was 2 pounds over but didn’t have to take anything out because my flight wasn’t full. She eyed my backpack and slapped a white, magnetic Tailwind wristband on my wrist: my boarding pass.

Just before 3 p.m., three of us and a dog boarded a launch boat for a short ride across the harbor to the seaplane dock. By 3:05, we were all inside the seaplane.

Tailwind is a commuter airline, not a guided sightseeing tour, but the pilot suggested the fourth seat back on the left side for good views of the Zakim Bridge, one of the widest cable-stayed bridges in the world, the Charles River and Fenway Park. It was a good call.

We taxied on the water for several minutes and were airborne before 3:15 p.m. The ascent was pretty bumpy, and Aria, a border collie mix, immediately got sick.

Aria, who sports a Christian Louboutin collar, probably won’t be returning to the seaplane anytime soon, but her owner, 30-year-old New York attorney Nathan Noh, says he’s sold on it.

“I’ve always been looking for fast and easy ways to get between the two cities,” he says.

Our flight didn’t make the stop in East Hampton after all. The seaplane splashed down in the East River at 4:25p.m. We were at Skyport, New York’s seaplane terminal off East 23rd Street and the FDR Drive by 4:30 p.m. Even with a stop at Tailwind’s lounge, a space it shares with Blade Air Mobility, I checked into my Midtown hotel at 5:11 p.m., little more than two hours after the boat launch.

My return trip to Boston on Amtrak took three hours and 45 minutes, not counting travel time to and from the train stations. Tailwind took the crown for speed, hands down.

Advantage goes to Amtrak for comfort, productivity, perks and price.

A friend’s expiring first-class upgrade landed me in seat 14A, with a tray table, predeparture drinks and mixed nuts, chilled ginger shrimp for lunch and crème brûlée for dessert.

For a conversation starter, though, it will be hard to beat the time I coasted into Manhattan by seaplane.

Tailwind Air links New York City and Boston by seaplane.

By Howard Goodman

Before You Fly, You Float

At the end of a pier jutting into the East River off 23rd Street, you step carefully onto a bobbing Cessna Caravan EX, taking care as the wing just inches above your head rises and falls with the waves.

You strap yourself into one of the eight leather seats. Soon, the plane’s door is shut and you are bouncing on the water, the New York City skyline

doing trampoline jumps in the windows. Then the Pratt & Whitney engine roars and you are gaining speed, the plane cutting through the water like a motorboat. Near the United Nations building, you lift off, the pontoons shedding foam as you rise.

Manhattan is clear as cut glass in the morning light. You are suddenly eye-level with the buildings’ upper floors, then above them as you make out Central Park and the Jersey side of the Hudson all in the same magnificent vista. It’s a Hollywood view of America’s greatest city.

Boston Harbor is just an hour and 10 minutes away.

This is travel by Tailwind Air, the only scheduled seaplane service in the US Northeast. Since 2021, this mainly-charter company based in Port Chester, NY, has provided service two or three times a day from early April through mid-December,

offering exceedingly scenic transit from midtown Manhattan to downtown Boston that is hours faster than trains or other airlines.

It’s not the cheapest way to go: fares usually range from US $395 to US $895 one way between New York and Boston, depending on booking times, discounts, and packages. During summer months, from late May to mid-September, Tailwind’s seaplanes also plop down off the Hamptons and Shelter Island in New York’s Long Island; Newport, Rhode Island; and Provincetown, Plymouth, and Nantucket, Massachusetts. This fall, they will resume flights to Washington, DC. The network has terrestrial destinations, too, including Westchester Airport in New York and Bridgeport, Connecticut.

This year, Tailwind announced something new for high- flyers who make frequent trips between the Big Apple and Beantown—a plan called Fast Lane Club Plus. For $4,995 a year, members can take unlimited flights for $1 when select seats are available. Fast Lane members also have everyday access to seats on other Tailwind flights at discounts of 30% to 70%.

“For our Boston-Manhattan route, about 60% of passengers are business travelers,” said Peter Manice, Tailwind co-founder and executive vice president, “with that number increasing as the pandemic pauses recede and people are out there meeting face to face again.”

“Business is good,” Manice added. “We’ve expanded to daily service and launched some new routes. We’ve still got some work to maximize load factors, but our base of frequent fliers is encouraging, showing the value we deliver over commercial airline and train options.”

On April 21, Airways flew as Tailwind’s guest from New York to Boston and back as the company opened its 2023 season. We were among six passengers, none happier than an aviation-smitten 6-year-old named Victor who had been taken on the trip by his father as a birthday present.

Tailwind’s office at the Skyport Seaplane Base, on the old New York piers, is so nondescript you have to look hard for it; the place used to be a stockroom. Boarding is a throwback. You can show up 10 minutes before departure time, and there’s no security machine to walk through.

Passengers can carry only 20lb of luggage, so these flights might be best for short visits. No food or drinks are served on the flight, but you can bring your own or grab some of the pretzels, chips, and bottled water that Tailwinds lays out in the waiting area. And there’s no onboard lavatory. A pit stop is advised before boarding.

Onboard, the eight seats are in a 1-1 pattern, each one next to a window with the aisle down the middle, and there’s nothing separating passengers from the Pilots. You get a good view of the cockpit instruments and the front windshield, as you would on a bus. The generous seat pitch runs up to 36”.

All of Tailwind’s planes can land on the ground as well as water, which comes in handy when visibility is poor or the winds severe, Manice said.

Our flight was called for 08:50 and we were in the air at 09:09.

No one seemed to mind being a few minutes slow in getting started, possibly because we were so agog at the views. Just minutes after rising from the river, the Bronx and Queens stretched before us and, soon, we were flying directly over LaGuardia, the parked planes posed at perfect angles below us. Then, we were looking down on the lush reaches of Gatsby’s northern Long Island, crossing Long Island Sound to Connecticut, and flying almost perfectly north by northeast through mostly rural stretches of New England.

As we climbed, the 41ft, 7in plane was a little shaky but, once we hit the 12,000ft cruising altitude, the ride settled in a smooth and easy glide.

Connecticut and Rhode Island sped below us in a hurry. Unbelievably soon, we were swooping past Boston office buildings and curving into Boston Harbor, the plane bouncing a bit on the water as it scudded to a stop. We passengers applauded and Captain Luca Solari turned to us with a big grin, clasping his hands like a boxing champ. Then, he piloted us over the water to a landing raft not far from Logan International Airport. Co-Pilot Brody Carlson stood on the plane’s left pontoon, ready with a rope to tie the plane to the raft, boating-style.

From the raft, we boarded a motorboat for a 10-minute ride to Fan Pier, a newly developed section extending Boston’s downtown to the south. It was only mid-morning. If we’d had a business appointment, we would have had plenty of time for it.

Later that afternoon, we retraced our steps, our return flight called for 16:00. This time, we checked in not at an office but at a bright, little waterfront restaurant, the ReelHouse Oyster Bar, where an upbeat employee in a Tailwinds ball cap worked from a laptop at the bar.

The trip started with the water taxi ride. The takeoff was quick—smoother than the morning’s. We flew so low for most of the flight that it was easy to make out individual cars, trucks, even people moving around a soccer field. Our course took us right over the old street scheme of Providence, Rhode Island. We crossed the Connecticut River north of where it empties at Old Saybrook, then the Sound, then miles of Long Island exurb and suburb until there, again, lay the expanse of New York—its bridges, its haze to the horizon, its densely compacted towers.

The plane descended on a parallel to FDR Drive and we splashed down between Manhattan’s East Village and Brooklyn’s Greenpoint. We looped around in the East River’s waters to putter back north to 23rd Street as a long, stately barge glided past us on its own New York voyage.It was an impressive vessel, but it was never going to leave the water and sail through the air. You had to feel sorry for it.

©2023 Airways Magazine.

Tailwind Air, the only operator of scheduled seaplane service in the Northeast, has launched a new route between NYC and Newport, RI for the summer 2023 season.

By Christian Winthrop

Travelers can experience hassle-free travel to Newport with scheduled seaplane service from East 23rd Street in Manhattan while skipping over the I-95 traffic and starting your weekend on your time.

“We are thrilled to begin our service between Manhattan and Newport, RI,” said Alan Ram, the CEO of Tailwind Air. “Newport is a destination that has long been popular with our charter clients, and we are excited to be able to offer a scheduled service option for travelers. Like all of our routes, we utilize the versatility of waterway access in urban cores like Boston and Manhattan to provide massive times savings and the elimination of congested city airports.”

“Newport is one of the most iconic communities on the eastern seaboard, and we are excited to welcome Tailwind Air as a partner that delivers a journey fitting the caliber of the destination,” says Newport Mayor Xaykham (Xay) Khamsyvoravong

The flights will operate Thursday, Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays from May 25 through late September. Because the aircraft have floats and wheels, flights take off from the East River and land at Newport State Airport in just 65 minutes. Service is also available from Newport to Provincetown, MA.

For a limited time, select seats are available starting at $695 each way. Fully refundable seats are $1095 each way. Flights to Provincetown start at just $295 each way.

“Tailwind Air will offer the fastest, least stressful, premium way to travel between Newport, RI and Manhattan,” Tailwind Air cofounder Peter Manice said. “That, paired with the unforgettable views, makes this the superior travel option.

Tailwind Air’s seaplanes offer travelers an unparalleled experience, combining the speed and convenience of air travel with the flexibility of landing on water. The new service to Newport will take approximately 65 minutes from Manhattan.

Tailwind’s seaplanes are the fastest way in and out of Manhattan. Fly over the traffic on well timed scheduled shuttles to Newport, RI, Boston Harbor, Bridgeport, CT, or one of 3 destinations in the Hamptons.

The company also offers scheduled service between Boston and Nantucket, Provincetown, Plymouth, and Manhattan.

Or charter one of their seaplanes to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, Fishers Island, Upstate New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Virginia, and everywhere in between.

While the scheduled service operates from the airport, charters can choose to take off near Goat Island if desired.

The dog-friendly airline uses modern Caravan Cessna EX turboprop amphibian aircraft for all flights. Flights feature two pilots and crowd-free direct access to the aircraft, with passengers needing to arrive just 10 minutes before scheduled departure time. All flights come with comfortable seating for up to eight

With similar leg space to a premium economy seat. Tailwind operates a fleet of amphibian turboprop Grand Caravans averaging under five years of age and capable of operating in all the weather conditions of similar land aircraft.

For schedules, more information, and tickets, including money saving options like commuter books (prepaid packs of tickets), visit Flytailwind.com or call 212-328-9145

©2023 The Newport Buzz.

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The Tailwind Air trip takes 75 minutes, and the best part is you get to check in for your flight at an oyster bar.

By Stefanie Waldek

For those who have traveled between New York and Boston, you’ve probably taken the train, driven, or maybe even flown on a commuter jet. But we’re willing to guess you probably haven’t made the journey via seaplane. Well, now you can.

Tailwind Air just relaunched its seasonal route between New York and Boston, flying eight-seat Cessna Caravan seaplanes between the cities twice daily in each direction: once in the morning and once in the evening. The flights depart from and arrive at the New York Skyports Seaplane Base on East 23rd Street in Manhattan and the ReelHouse Oyster Bar – Seaport in Boston Harbor (yes, you’ll be checking in at an oyster bar). All in, you’re looking at about a 75-minute flight in each direction.

This seaplane experience differs significantly from regular flights. For starters, the flights are designed for daily commuters or single-day sightseers, as luggage is restricted to a single bag weighing less than 20 pounds — it must fit beneath the seat in front of you or in one of the small baggage compartments on board. And then there’s the fact that you only have to show up 20 minutes before your flight, no TSA security check necessary. (If you’ve ever flown out of a private terminal on a semi-private jet, these seaplane terminals operate similarly.) 

“Demand for our flagship service between Manhattan and Boston Harbor, which takes just 75 minutes, continues to grow. Last year, our overall ticketed revenue grew by over 400 percent,” said Peter Manice, Tailwind Air’s vice president of scheduled service, in an interview Travel + Leisure. Beyond the New York–Boston route, Tailwind Air also flies to Provincetown, Sag Harbor/East Hampton, Shelter Island, Bridgetown, Plymouth, and, as of this summer, Nantucket. The airline will also fly between New York and Washington, D.C., starting this fall.

Rates for the New York–Boston flights start at $395 each way (which is pretty reasonable when you consider an Amtrak ticket for a train from New York to Boston costs $161 to $327 this month). You can also buy commuter books (multi-flight packs) for a discount. There are also two membership programs — Fast Lane Club and Fast Lane Club PLUS — that provide even better discounts. With Fast Lane Club PLUS, which costs $4,495 per year, members have access to last-minute flight deals as low as $1 per seat. Availability for that deal is, of course, quite limited. 

To book your next flight on Tailwind Air, or to sign up for a membership, visit flytailwind.com. 

©2023 Travel and Leisure.

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Tailwind is the only seaplane carrier allowed to take off and land in Boston Harbor.

By JOE DWINELL

The fastest commute to Manhattan by land, sea or air takes just 20 seconds to catch wind.

That’s how long Tailwind Air’s Cessna Grand Caravan seaplane needed to start its climb high over the Seaport.

The bumper-to-bumper traffic is someone else’s problem as you begin a 1-hour journey to New York City that brings you a few docks down from the United Nations.

“Wow! What a view,” a traveling companion said as the amphibious turboprop swooshed down on the East River with the majestic skyline climbing high like steel sequoias.

Tailwind Air is the only carrier allowed to land in Boston Harbor — and they plan on expanding their fleet this summer.

“We hope to keep on growing,” said Tailwind Air co-founder Peter Manice, adding that flights to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard are on the horizon. They already offer trips out of Plymouth, Provincetown, Boston, East Hampton, N.Y., NYC and Washington, D.C.

With the pandemic finally easing up, traffic jams are returning with a vengeance — especially in New York City and Boston. Seaplanes appear to be the future, and they are here now.

A one-way Tailwind flight from Boston to Manhattan runs from $395 to $795, depending on when you book. The company offers programs for frequent fliers, and you can purchase books of tickets. They take the winter off from late December to mid-March.

Kids, pets, sightseers, theatergoers, business travelers, leaf-peepers and all others are welcome and gift cards are available. You land so close to Broadway, you could come dressed for a show and arrive in minutes once you hail a taxi.

Tailwind also partners with Omni Hotels — Omni Berkshire Place in New York City and Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport. It’s a synergy aimed at attracting the VFR crowd — those visiting friends and relatives.

The Omni Berkshire Place is close to all the action, from 30 Rock to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Radio City Music Hall.

If the weather turns bad, Tailwind’s Cessnas can take off from Logan Airport or land at Norwood Airport.

For one-off trips, all the pilots need is a lake or clear spot on the ocean to plunk passengers down if they want to charter a flight. David Ortiz and Pedro Martinez did just that when Big Papi needed a ride to the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in July, Manice said.

“In New England, we can go just about anywhere,” he added.

Taking off and landing in both Boston and Manhattan is exhilarating. Along the way you see central Massachusetts, the Connecticut River, and Long Island Sound before the skyscrapers bring you home.

You pick up the ferry on Fan Pier in the Seaport and board the plane on a dock in the Harbor not far from the Logan runways. Soon all boats ease out of the way and snap photos of the seaplane as it soars into the sky.

That’s the last traffic you’ll see — other than a few geese — until you hit the docks.

©2022 Boston Herald.

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By Ben McGrath

Afew weeks ago, the children’s-book author Billy Baldwin was enjoying an afternoon ride in his outrigger canoe, beyond a floating dock in Sag Harbor, when he noticed something that caused him to reach down and release the leash around his ankle, the better for abandoning ship in a panic. A seaplane was racing in his direction, its pontoons pointed at him like torpedoes. Lucky for Baldwin, the plane’s pilot noticed him just in time to swerve. Crisis averted; harbormaster notified.

That was before the recent heat wave, and the covid resurgence, and with them the desperate exodus to the beach. But how do you get there from here (wherever you may be)? Traffic on the L.I.E. has got so bad, or so one hears, that surgeons report a rise in Botox injections to the bladder, to enable travelers to numb time’s endless passage with road beers. East Hampton Airport continues to be threatened with closure, amid escalating noise complaints and high-class warfare over all the window-rattling choppers. (“EVERY SEVEN MINUTES,” one resident complained online.) A person could be forgiven for wondering—sorry, paddlers!—where to catch that seaplane.

“You’re part of a secret society, really, because not a lot of people fly like this,” Edmond Huot, an adman tasked with branding the “seaplane experience” for Tailwind Air, said the other day. He was seated inside a small, air-conditioned lounge off the F.D.R. Drive, at East Twenty-third Street. “I’ve seen executives get out of their big car, and it looks like they’re coming from somewhere in FiDi, and then suddenly they’re rolling up their sleeves and pant legs.” An e-mail confirmation to a rookie passenger had included the following warning: “Please be aware that you may need to remove shoes and get your feet wet.” Just outside, a thumping bass track emanated from a stocked bar belonging to Blade, Tailwind’s competitor. “So Blade, for example, has their way of serving their customers, their sort of style,” Huot said. Think “Succession.” Tailwind, by contrast, is hoping to conjure “the nostalgia of people using seaplanes in the seventies to go to Montauk—like Andy Warhol.” Its planes are Cessna Caravan Amphibians, with designs dating to the Reagan era.

The next flight, bound for Sag Harbor with a stop at Shelter Island, was scheduled to ascend from the East River in half an hour. Such are the perks of seaplane travel that the lounge—a leather couch, a few stools, a mini-fridge, no Pop art—was still empty, save for Huot and the rookie. Huot, who grew up on a farm in Canada, was free to dish. “I got word that one client bought the whole flight,” he said, meaning all eight seats, on a recurring basis, for one of Tailwind’s routes, which include not just the Hamptons but Provincetown and more business-friendly destinations, like Boston Harbor and, planned for the fall, Washington, D.C. “This guy is, like, ‘I’ll just take the whole plane.’ ” A one-way ticket to Sag or Shelter starts at seven hundred and ninety-five dollars.

Inside the cockpit, it wasn’t chopper-loud, but you couldn’t converse without yelling, and so nobody did. Soon, the Long Island Sound broadened, and the plane veered away from the shoreline, offering little for a real-estate voyeur to ogle. A blond woman in a black pants suit unrolled her copy of the Post. The rookie’s bladder began to swell with San Pellegrino from the mini-fridge. Then, thirty-five minutes after takeoff, the seaplane swooped down and skidded across the Peconic River, toward Shelter Island, with no paddlecraft in sight. A fibreglass skiff pulled up alongside it, to provide ferry service to Sunset Beach. A passenger in a seersucker shirt remarked to the boat’s captain on the stress-free ride, and what it might portend for the sunny days ahead: “I’d knock on wood, but there’s no wood.” The rookie, heeding the advance warning, was wearing sandals, in anticipation of getting wet, but the tide turned out to be high enough that the captain was able to nose the skiff’s bow up to dry sand for a soft landing. ♦

Published in the print edition of the August 1, 2022, issue, with the headline “Water Landing.”

©2022 The New Yorker

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Seaplane service is currently landing at Provincetown Airport.

BY PAUL BENSON JUL 13, 2022

PROVINCETOWN — Just before Memorial Day, Tailwind Air added Provincetown to its roster of seaplane destinations. The eight-passenger, two-pilot Cessnas fly from the East 23rd Street seaport on Manhattan’s East River to the Boston Harbor seaport and then to Provincetown Airport on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings. Then they fly the same route in reverse on Sunday afternoon and Monday and Tuesday mornings.

Tailwind had originally planned to land in Provincetown Harbor, with passengers deplaning to a water taxi that would take them to the Provincetown Marina. Tailwind’s co-founder and vice president Peter Manice told the Independent that, while those arrangements proved too complex to pull together this year, the company still plans to be taking off from and landing in Provincetown Harbor next year.

“For years we just served Manhattan to the Hamptons, primarily East Hampton, Montauk, and Shelter Island,” Manice said. “The big thing that happened for our company last summer is we became the first and only aircraft operator to be approved for landings in Boston Harbor.”

The Manhattan to Boston route began last August, which opened up the possibility of an onward route to Provincetown. Flights from the East River to Boston Harbor run from March to December, while the Provincetown stop is scheduled from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day.

That could be extended in the future. “It’s in our interest to serve more than just the summer,” Manice said. “We have to have an audience, but to the extent people begin to rely on our service, April to December is certainly in our operating season.”

The direction of takeoff and landing in the harbor would vary based on wind, but Manice said landing in a harbor like Provincetown’s is less complicated than it might sound.

“The East River Basin where we take off from 23rd Street, it’s surrounded by giant buildings, bridges on both sides, commercial ferries, cargo boats, recreational traffic, and many other seaplanes as well,” said Manice. “And helicopters are taking off and landing. It’s all a choreographed dance.

“Provincetown, truthfully, is pretty straightforward,” Manice added. “It really won’t be obtrusive to existing marine traffic.”

Manice said the company has corresponded with Provincetown’s harbormaster and town manager but hasn’t met them in person. The Provincetown route was added on “relatively short notice,” Manice said, but the company is planning to work with the town in the off-season to facilitate water landings next year.

“Our pilots do this all day long,” said Manice. “Recreational boats really don’t need to do anything — the aircraft will avoid them. Nothing is going to show up out of the fog and land on top of your head.”

In the meantime, the connection to Provincetown Airport has been working quite well, Manice said. One of the company’s key selling points is the ability to avoid large commercial airports like JFK, LaGuardia, and Logan. Taking off from the water is nice, but skipping the large-airport experience is the real draw.

Provincetown Airport is so small that it doesn’t detract from the passenger’s experience, Manice added. When weather conditions are poor, however, the planes fly into the private aviation terminal at Logan and to the White Plains Airport just north of New York City.

The route from Manhattan to Provincetown has been successful so far, Manice said. “It’s been quite well received, especially by New Yorkers,” he said. “Next year, we plan to have more aircraft in our fleet and provide, likely, a daily service, if not more than that.”

Tickets from New York to Provincetown start at $799. A 10-ticket commuter pass locks in a price of $858 for each of 10 tickets, even if the last available seats would sell for more than that.

Seaplanes vs. Jets

On a cultural level, the connection between New York and Provincetown is not new. The Provincetown Players, who included such luminaries as Eugene O’Neill and Mary Heaton Vorse, opened the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village in 1916, only two miles from the current location of the Skyport Marina.

The trip between the two places, however, has always been rather arduous. Less than two hours is something new.

“Provincetown is a difficult place to get to,” said state Sen. Julian Cyr. “Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard feel very much like the Outer Cape, especially on the beaches, but the difference is the air traffic. Nantucket is the second-busiest airport in New England in the summer.”

Nantucket’s three runways range from 3,100 to 6,300 feet and handle a huge volume of corporate and private jets. Provincetown’s single runway is only 3,500 feet, and it is hemmed in by Race Point Road and the tidal flats of Hatch’s Harbor. It is also one of only two airports inside the National Park system, along with Jackson Hole airport in Wyoming.

Airport commission member Steve Katsurinis said there are no active plans to lengthen the runway to allow for regional jets.

“We’re already talking about having to raise the airport because of sea level rise,” said Katsurinis. “It’s precisely the places where you would try to expand that are going to be underwater.”

Commuting by seaplane is certainly something new — and the demand may not be limited to summer. When it comes to corporate jets, however, it’s the supply that matters, and the supply of runway here remains permanently constrained.

©2022 The Provincetown Independent

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The vaunted, venture capital-fueled Urban Air Mobility (UAM) market and its promised electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxis won’t be a reality for mass (or minor) transit for years to come. But Tailwind Air already provides fast city to city service from urban cores in the northeast using seaplanes and it’s looking to grow.

The practice of using seaplanes, or more precisely land/water-capable floatplanes or “amphibians,” for scheduled air service pre-dates World War I and such services flourished in the 1920s/30s. While they largely disappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, commercial floatplane passenger carriers never went away in the northwest, Hawaii and the Caribbean.

Tailwind Air founder Alan Ram, an aerospace veteran and Washington, D.C.-based entrepreneur, had them in mind when he established the company in 2012. It was about the time the first UAM startups began articulating the same logic Ram used to advance his company.

“He found the amount of time it takes to get between New York and Boston or Washington frustrating. Whether slow trains, congested roads or the headaches of commercial passenger service from airports, he saw agonizingly slow service,” says Peter Manice, Tailwind’s director of scheduled services and co-founder.

The company says it has managed to speed that up via floatplane, offering a transit time from a home or office door in Manhattan to Fan Pier Marina in Boston Harbor of two hours. For comparison, Tailwind cites an average airline shuttle (Delta, JetBlue) trip time of about 3.5 hours and a 4.5-hour average trip via Amtrak’s Acela train.

“We are 50% to 100% faster than any alternative between Manhattan and downtown Boston. Period.” Tailwind claims.

It’s a claim that would likely hold up against would-be UAM competitors, not because Tailwind’s Cessna Grand Caravan Amphibian EX floatplanes cruise at about 190 mph (a speed loaded eVTOL aircraft may will struggle to match) but because battery-electric air taxis like Joby’s five-passenger electric S4 have a best-case range of less than the 186 air-miles between New York and Boston and other city pairs.

Speed and convenience underpin Tailwind’s pricing strategy, which aims to be 1.5 to 2.5 times the price of a last-minute airline shuttle or Acela ticket. That makes for an average one-way ticket of $500, Manice says.

“We serve a premium business traveler, a high-end leisure traveler who places value on time savings.”

Tailwind currently operates three Grand Caravan Amphibians and is looking to add a fourth this year and to have six to seven in its fleet next year. The amphibian quality of Cessna’s Caravan is relevant because it offers Tailwind much needed flexibility to operate from land as well as water.

For all their convenience, passenger-carrying floatplanes don’t fly from the water at night or in a variety of weather conditions (wind/wave, fog, icing limits).

“When there’s fog in Boston, we’ll actually just land at Logan [Airport],” Manice says. The same alternate airport strategy holds for the other destinations Tailwind flies to and from including Plymouth and Provincetown, Mass.; Bridgeport Conn.; Westchester, N.Y.; and Long Island’s East Hampton, Shelter Island, Sag Harbor and Montauk.

Weather and the water are determinant factors in Tailwind’s scheduled service which runs from Boston and New York City three times daily every day except Saturday (2 times) from late March through mid-December. The airline’s Hamptons and other Massachusetts routes are generally active from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Until Tailwind pushed nearly year-round scheduled service, floatplane passenger carriers were strictly seasonal (summer) in the northeast and none flew into Boston Harbor.

“When it came to places like Boston, we were not allowed to land on the water,” Manice explains. “The [airspace] was under direct [air traffic] control of the tower at Logan International Airport all the way down to the water. We actually went through a three-year process and three years of investment to get approval from myriad government agencies to land there.”

Approval was granted last summer and Tailwind’s service to Boston from Manhattan began in August 2021. Despite the time and money spent to land on Boston Harbor, Manice says that Tailwind’s ethos “of plugging into existing infrastructure as much as possible” is key to its success. That’s a different route to UAM than companies financed to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars like Volocopter or Wisk Aero have taken.

Without the need to perfect electric propulsion, battery and flight control technologies, or kickstart new infrastructure like vertiports and high-voltage recharging physical plants, Tailwind has been able to get off the water and operate commercially within a decade without unlimited funding.

While the company recognizes the development ongoing in the UAM space, Manice says they also understand that the arrival and scope of real-world eVTOL air taxi services remains up in the air. Some would-be UAM operators have actually looked at Tailwind as a case study he affirms.

The company’s practical experience could translate to the adoption of new platforms once they’re ready. Tailwind already has a link with Airflow whose nine passenger, M200 fixed wing short takeoff and landing (STOL) hybrid-electric or battery-electric aircraft is currently in development. Fittingly, Airflow’s plans call for an amphibious version of the M200.

For now, the company is happy with its small Caravan fleet which Manice says it operates at highest FAA Part 135 level with two pilots in each aircraft despite the turboprop Cessna’s clearance for single pilot operation. Passengers seem to like it as well he contends, raising awareness of Tailwind Air.

Word-of-mouth from happy customers who Manice says have found the service “game-changing” has provided the most attention so far. “We’re a small company,” Manice acknowledges. That translates to constrained resources for getting the word out. “We have a limited direct-marketing spend,” he says, “but we work hard for earned-media”.

The work has yielded dividends with Tailwind poised for growth on existing and new routes. “I have no doubt that frequency will be expanding,” Manice says. “We’re looking forward to the possibility [of service from] Washington DC.”

An announcement on service from DC should come late this month or early next he says. It won’t be the first time commercial floatplane service has taken off from the nation’s capital nor the first time it has been considered. Scheduled service from the Potomac River was pitched in the late 1980s though it wasn’t realized. Then as now, there were obstacles not the least of which is the FAA restricted airspace that’s been around the City since the September 11 attacks.

“We would love to see a seaplane landing in the Potomac River and taxiing right into the boat basin there,” Manice says but he adds that’s not likely any time soon. Instead, Tailwind will be inaugurating service from the “Washington DC area” which may mean taking off on the Potomac well south of the City in suburban Virginia or possibly from a waterway to the east in Maryland.

“We do not have direct competition but we expect it at some point,” Manice affirms. The company views the airlines and Amtrak as indirect competitors along with more expensive helicopter charter services and shorter-ranged helicopter shuttle services around New York City.

With the limits on water-borne operations in weather and at night, Manice says the small company recognizes it isn’t a default commuting option. “Not everybody wants to get into a seaplane. They want to be on terra firma or a giant airplane where they perceive safety.”

Nonetheless he says Tailwind thinks of itself as a “regional Concorde” with scheduled service planned beyond its expansion to the mid-Atlantic, eventually to Chicago, Florida and other southern markets. For now, it’s small-scale, practical UAM.

“It’s the best and fastest way to get from A to B in the northeast,” Manice asserts.

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Boston 25 News

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BOSTON — Daily seaplane service from Boston Harbor to New York City has been so popular this spring, the company is expanding to include flights to Cape Cod.

Beginning this week, 20-minute flights to Provincetown will be available according to Tailwind. The company says those flights will average $300 each way.

“Our clientele is very concerned about what they can do to save time and enjoy their vacation,” said Tailwind’s director of sales, Gabriela Salas. She told Boston 25 News that higher ticket prices compared to commercial air travel have not stopped customers from booking flights.

“Well, if you compare it to the train, you know, the fares that the train offers are very compatible with ours. We start at $395 per seat, and it goes up to $795,” Salas said, discussing the current New York flights. “If you think about traveling 75 minutes and you’re in Manhattan, you don’t have to deal with TSA, no crowds. You don’t have to even be here an hour before the flight 10 minutes is enough for us.”

Repeat flyer and Belmont native Nick Delhome said he likes the convenience.

“I’m busy with work, I can’t really afford to take like the 4-6 hour trip to and from, you know, LaGuardia and Logan and stuff. And then obviously, the train is pretty long too,” Delhome added.

Salas said Tailwind also flies from Plymouth to Boston, for $75, or “about the same price as an Uber.”

Tailwind’s flights take off from Fan Pier Marina in Boston Harbor. Captain Evan Phillips told Chief Meteorologist Kevin Lemanowicz, that weather plays a role in take-off and landing on the water.

“Just a matter of learning how to read the water, and read the weather,” Capt. Phillips said. “It’s a little bit easier because the runways are set positions, were on the water, we have 360 degrees that we can land in any direction,” Phillips said.

Typically, seaplanes need a ceiling of 2,000 feet to take off from the harbor, so a cloudy day can mean rescheduling your flight.

“When we file our flight plans, we also get a weather briefing,” said Capt. Phillips. “We’re able to check that ahead of time and keep safety as the number one thing in mind.”

Salas says Tailwind is owned by veterans, and 40% of the company’s pilots are women. The company also offers charter flights. For more information visit www.flyTailwind.com/


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