A CT airline created hundreds of jobs, drawing mostly from other professions. Here’s why they’re excited to come to work.

Kim Howard had always wanted to become a flight attendant, even during her career as an OB/GYN nurse.

When she moved in 2018 from Hamden to a house near Tweed New Haven Airport, she didn’t realize that in three years she’d be the lead flight attendant on Avelo Airlines’ first flight, Nov. 3, 2021.

“I was a nurse for 19 years and decided that this was something I always wanted to do and that I was going to change my profession,” Howard said last week from Miami, where she was training new flight attendants.

“Being a flight attendant was my dream. If I was going to do anything, it would be a flight attendant,” she said. “And so when I came aboard I worked really hard at making sure I honed in on understanding the job and doing it to the best of my ability and doing it well.”

Just 17 months later, she is already an instructor.

Howard, 51, is one of more than 200 employees Avelo has hired since it launched service at Tweed, most of whom came from other trades and professions. The airline has held job fairs in East Haven and New Haven and a large number of its New Haven employees come from the area.

For many, like Howard, it is a complete change of career.

For her, Avelo was ideal too because she is based in New Haven, takes one or two round trips on a shift, and sleeps in her own bed, a minute away from the airport.

Her teaching assignment does take her to Miami for three weeks at a time, but that’s not a regular post.

“When I became a flight attendant I made a conscious effort to make sure that I did the job the best that I can do it,” Howard said. “And so by doing that, when the opportunity for me to interview to become a ground instructor came up, I was ready. I had really worked hard to make sure I know how to be the best flight attendant I can be. And I teach that every day here when I’m in training.”

The lifestyle makes it even better, she said. “I stay here for ground instructing, but when I’m not and I’m flying, I’m home every night, so I get to spend time with my husband and travel in between,” she said. “So it just works great for my life and gives me the freedom I didn’t have as a nurse.”

Being second in seniority at Tweed also gives Howard an advantage. Flight attendants can either be line holders, which are bid on according to seniority, or reserves.

“As a line holder, I would bid for a complete month of flying but I would know when I’m flying,” Howard said. “As a reserve, you don’t necessarily know when you’re going to fly because they ask you to fly when needed. … So for a whole month I have a schedule, which is great.”

Being No. 2 in seniority, “when I bid I get a beautiful line that I want,” she said. During the month, she may fly to any of Avelo’s destinations: Florida, Charleston, S.C., Baltimore, Nashville, North Carolina.

Avelo also has charter flights, which gives the crew a chance for a layover. And as a passenger, Avelo employees fly free.

In making her decision to become a flight attendant, Howard said, “my deciding factor for me doing it was New Haven.”

There’s legacy airlines that are amazing,” such as Delta, United and American. “But the difference is I would have to travel and be away and learn the profession,” she said.

“I would be 4,000 or more in regards to the amount of flight attendants they have,” Howard said. “I wouldn’t have personal experience with the coolest people next to me and I wouldn’t have the opportunities that I’m having right now. So, for me, it was opportunity and timing and location.”

It helps that Avelo has a casual philosophy. She can wear jeans with her uniform. She’s also starting to see regulars on her flights that come from nearby towns, including Branford, where she grew up. Avelo recently flew its millionth customer out of Tweed.

A flight attendant’s most important duty is safety, Howard said. “There’s a misconception that we’re just passing snacks,” she said. “Our job is to make sure that you have a safe, amazing, friendly experience, but we’re also responsible for your safety. We want to make sure that you get from your home to your destination safely with a friendly and caring flight attendant.”

From a firefighter to head of customer service

Felipe Cordero, 52, retired as a battalion chief with the New Haven Fire Department in June 2020 after 25 years of service. He said his wife got tired of him sitting around the house, but he was bored too.

An East Haven resident, he joined Avelo almost a year ago and is now customer service lead. He said his job is to “oversee the ticket counter, oversee the boarding process, take care of minor complaints from customers.”

In fact, he can be found anywhere at Tweed, from standing at the gate to helping someone in a wheelchair onto the plane.

“I love the interaction with the customers,” he said. “At any time of the day we get thousands of customers. … And it’s very rewarding to see the families travel for the first time, to see the smile on the kids’ faces when they (say) that they’re going to Disney for the first time. We get a lot of that.” New fliers get a stamp on their boarding pass marking the occasion.

Some customers can need more help, he said. “Fortunately, with the background that I have, I’m kind of used to facing some stressful situations. So I think I handle it pretty well,” Cordero said.

He said he retired from the fire service partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made life even more stressful. But also, “we have great-grandbabies coming so my wife and I want to spend more time with them as well.”

Cordero found out about the job when he ran into a fellow retired firefighter. “And he saw me out with the wife one night and said, Phil, you ready to go back to work? And I was like, Yeah, I guess I’m going to join the workforce again. The wife was tired of seeing me on the couch for two years.”

Now, Cordero logs 25,000 to 30,000 steps a day and his wife, Rebecca, is jealous she can’t keep up, he said. “She tries to compete with me, but she can’t touch me,” he said.

He started at the ticket counter. “Then I went to the boarding process, I started working outside on the ramp, and eventually got promoted to lead,” he said.

Another thing Cordero enjoys is “working with such a diverse pool of people at Avelo. I mean, the inclusivity and diversity that Avelo provides is amazing. I’ve never worked with so many different people.”

It helps that Cordero is bilingual in English and Spanish. “It’s great to see when a customer comes in and English isn’t their first language,” he said. “Flying is already a stressful thing. Having to communicate with someone about it, it’s nice to have someone you could actually relate to and be able to interpret for them.”

A military man in charge of supplies

Jeffrey Brunson, 43, served three tours in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, Okinawa, South Korea and Germany, with both the Marines and the Army. He retired in January 2021.

“I was doing a lot of volunteering with youth and figuring out what I want to do for, not a job but for a career,” he said. “I’d seen the Avelo aircraft flying and I was like, wow, let me see if they have any openings. And it just so happened they had an opening for the exact same job, occupation as I did for the military.”

March 28 was his anniversary as an aviation materials specialist, which involves “receiving, shipping, accountability of parts and issuing parts and equipment for the aircraft.”

That can range from small packages to aircraft tires, which he ships or receives once or twice a week, he said.

Seeing Brunson greeting passengers and fellow crew members on the tarmac, it’s clear why he’s known as the mayor of Tweed.

The best part of his job, he said, is “the ability to see passengers that are about to partake on making memories. … These kids about to see Mickey. … To assist them to get to the destination, that is awesome. To see these kids with their Mickey ears and they’re going on vacation, the excitement. So it builds me up.”

Job fairs recruiting in East Haven, New Haven

Avelo CEO Andrew Levy, based in Houston, said recruiting crew members locally has been successful. “We’re really pleased about everything … we’re doing at Tweed, but the quality of the people that we’ve been able to bring on board is really noteworthy,” he said.

“It’s a good area to recruit people. People are really excited to work at Avelo and they take a lot of pride and we see that when we go up there,” he said.

“There are people that have come from all walks of life,” Levy said. “Former paramedic, nurses, teachers, you name it. We don’t focus recruiting on any particular discipline or former career. That’s not something that we go out of our way to try to do.”

That’s other than pilots and aircraft technicians, who bring specialized skills to the job, he said.

“If we can consider a much broader applicant pool, we do, and we just look to bring on more people who share our corporate values and that are going to be good fits within the company,” Levy said. “They come from all different paths of experiences.”

In addition to Avelo’s employees, the airline’s expansion has brought in additional jobs, Levy said, in airport maintenance, parking, the G Café inside Tweed and indirect jobs such as car-hailing services. Avelo spokesman Jim Olson said, “It’s in the hundreds in terms of direct and indirect airport-related jobs.”

Levy added that more jobs have been created at Avelo’s destination airports as well. “Every airplane company that either enplanes or deplanes drives economic activity,” he said. “So I think that’s the beauty of an airport and what it does (to create) massive amounts of economic activity. Some is direct in terms of employment at the local level and others are indirect, both employment at the local level as well as employment elsewhere.”

Expansion at Tweed, though, will depend on a new terminal being built in East Haven, which will open more space to keep planes on the ground as well as more flights. There still is opposition among East Haven residents and on Friday three legislators called on Tweed to produce a full environmental impact statement.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said he’s pleased with Avelo’s efforts to hire people from the two municipalities where the airport is located.

“What I’m particularly grateful for is that they’ve worked very hard to hire New Haven and East Haven residents, have multiple job fairs in New Haven. They’ve had multiple job fairs in East Haven,” he said.

“They also are collaborating with New Haven Works,” Elicker said. “In fact, their HR director for AvPORTS got an award from New Haven Works for the partnership there. I think that makes the service a lot better because people that live in the community are serving the community.”

Elicker said he took a recent trip to Baltimore with his wife and two young children and “the people were bending over backwards to be friendly and help us out.”

“Every time I go there, I try to talk to the people working there to get a sense of who is working there,” Elicker said. “And a lot of people have chosen that job because they’re excited about being associated with the airport and air travel, and I’ve just noticed that people are really excited about their job.”

Asked for comment, East Haven Mayor Joseph Carfora issued a statement: “Avelo Airlines is an active member of the East Haven community. I have always appreciated Avelo’s commitment to the Town of East Haven. As I have said in the past, we always want, and we will always support East Haven residents being afforded opportunities for employment.”

Carfora noted that the town partnered with Avelo in May 2022 to hold a job fair at Hagaman Memorial Public Library. “Job fairs like the one that we hosted to engage our citizens are always positive,” he said.

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.