I'm 70 miles from Bradley, and 73 from Newark, a bit closer for all the other NY area airports.

I base it on cost and schedule. For example, I can leave Napa at say 5:30 in the afternoon and be at work the next morning if I fly to the New York airports on my airline, but I can't do that to Bradley, there aren't many Red Eyes into BDL. If Delta or Southwest were my primary carriers then it would probably be different.

It's usually a bit more expensive too, unless there's some type of fare war going on.

It is however much easier to get to usually, and parking is considerably less money, and there is no hassle factor of getting to the gate or anything.

Another thing to consider is many people can reach any of the NY airports fairly easy from New Haven and Fairfield county by public transportation. Metro North to Grand Central, then subway/Airtrain or Subway/Train/Airtrain gets you to JFK or Newark, subway/bus gets you to LGA. The only real way to get to Bradley is to drive.

Even growing up as a kid in Wolcott, we never used Bradley, there was never decent flights to where we were going.

Bradley was built for the Army as a training (think it was training) for the war in the 40's named for the first person to die there in a training crash. It was turned over after the war to the state, so the location was not chosen for it's use as a commercial airport in the state but for the military. Had they choose a location for it today, it may be different, but at the time the center of the state was in the Hartford area and not down in New Haven and Bridgeport. There were smaller airports to handle those places.

I would bet it's nowhere near 50/50 for people in the New Haven area when choosing an airport, I'm betting far and away most people go to the three NY airports or White Plains over Bradley.

I would bet however more people from New Haven go to Bradley then fly out of New Haven