Allegiant Air will unveil three new cities and 22 new routes Tuesday in what the company is calling one of its biggest single expansion announcements ever.
The new cities joining Allegiant’s route map are Albuquerque, Evansville, Ind., and Santa Rosa, Calif. Allegiant’s first flights from Santa Rosa will start May 19 while its first routes from Albuquerque and Evansville begin June 2. With the three new destinations, Allegiant will serve 114 cities.
Beyond the five routes from the three new cities, Allegiant is also adding 17 additional routes that connect cities that it already serves. Markets getting new routes ranged from larger destinations like Los Angeles and Austin to smaller cities like Belleville, Ill., and Asheville, N.C.
“It’s a good mix. This announcement has something of everything,”Lukas Johnson, Allegiant’s Vice President of Planning, says in a phone interview with Today in the Sky. “No airport gets more than four routes. It’s a good mix of medium-sized (markets) and traditional small-sized destinations (with demand for leisure routes). It’s across-the-board growth.”
Allegiant’s Florida focus cities at Orlando-Sanford, Jacksonville and Destin-Fort Walton Beach each received four new routes. Elsewhere, Allegiant’s seasonal focus city in Myrtle Beach, S.C., was another big winner, landing three new nonstop routes.
That fits in line with Allegiant’s business model, which is built around offering nonstop flights from small and medium-sized markets to destinations that appeal to leisure fliers.
As with its other recent expansions, Allegiant has increasingly pushed into major airports that it used to avoid. Allegiant once flew almost exclusively between its focus cities and very small markets like Plattsburgh, N.Y.; Grand Island, Neb.; and Appleton, Wis. But Alleigant has started looking to larger markets in recent years. Austin, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Indianapolis and Cincinnati are among the bigger markets added to Allegiant’s network since 2013.
And Tuesday’s announcement is already Allegiant’s second major expansion announced so far in 2016. In January, Allegiant detailed plans to add three cities — Baltimore, El Paso and Destin, Fla. — as part of a 19-route expansion. Baltimore will become one of Allegiant’s largest non-focus city airports when service launches there in April.
Albuquerque was the only new mid-size market added in Tuesday’s announcement. But Allegiant did reveal plans to expand its presence in several big markets it already flies from. Los Angeles, for example, got two new routes while Oklahoma City, Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio, each got one in.
“We’ve been rapidly adding a lot of these mid-sized cities,” Johnson says. “We typically launch those mid-size markets with (service to) a couple of our destinations. Now it’s about connecting them up with the rest of our network.”
Among the more interesting new routes included in Allegiant’s latest expansion:
Los Angeles-Reno
Allegiant will join a crowded marketplace flying between these cities. The carrier will go head-to-head against three other carriers. American, Southwest, United each offer multiple daily round-trip flights between the cities. Allegiant will start with two flights a week.
“Certainly it’s a large market with a lot of competition on it,” Johnson tells Today in the Sky. “But there’s no ultra low-cost competition on it, so we feel pretty good about that.
Los Angeles-Memphis (seasonal)
One of Allegiant’s rare routes to connect two major metro areas, Allegiant says its two weekly flights are aimed squarely at leisure fliers. Allegiant will go head-to-head with Delta on the route.
“They have a business schedule on the Delta flight,” Johnson says. “They run Monday through Friday. They don’t serve weekends. It really caters to business travelers only. It’s quite pricey.”
“We’re not looking to take a business customer away from Delta,” Johnson adds. “Their main goal is to be able to take high-fare business customers on a good schedule to where they need to go. For us, we’ll have a nice flow of flights for a leisure traveler there.”
Austin-Albuquerque
Aside from bringing Allegiant to Albuquerque, this route is another that will connect two relatively large markets for the airline.
“Austin is one of the top unserved markets” from Albuquerque, Johnson says. “We’ve got a couple other markets running to Austin, so it made a lot of sense to us” to add Albuquerque too.
Destin, Fla.-Fort Lauderdale (seasonal)
This new Allegiant route will be entirely within Florida, making it one of only three intra-state routes operated by the carrier. San Diego-Stockton, Calif., and Las Vegas-Reno are the others. What makes the Destin-Fort Lauderdale route stand out is that it connects two leisure-oriented markets – a departure from Allegiant’s typical strategy. Johnson confirms that the route is aimed at leisure passengers in both markets, but says that Allegiant also hopes to lure locals wanting to visit friends or relatives living in the other part of Florida.
The full list of Allegiant’s 22 new routes
The full details for all of Allegiant’s new routes are below. Allegiant, which rarely flies daily service on any of its routes, plans to launch with two flights a week on all of the new routes.
Santa Rosa/Sonoma County. Calif.
– Las Vegas: Begins May 19
– Phoenix-Mesa: Begins May 26
Albuquerque
– Austin: Begins June 2
– Las Vegas: Begins June 2
Evansville, Ind.
– Orlando-Sanford: Begins June 2
Orlando-Sanford
– Akron-Canton: Begins May 19
– El Paso: Begins May 27 (seasonal)
– Wichita: Begins May 25 (seasonal)
Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
– Fort Lauderdale: Begins May 26 (seasonal)
– Knoxville, Tenn.: Begins May 27 (seasonal)
– Memphis: Begins: May 27 (seasonal)
– Oklahoma City: Begins May 26 (seasonal)
Myrtle Beach, S.C.
– Harrisburg, Pa.: Begins May 19 (seasonal)
– Newburgh/Stewart, N.Y.: Begins June 16 (seasonal)
– Toledo: Begins June 3 (seasonal)
Los Angeles
– Memphis: Begins June 2 (seasonal)
– Reno: Begins June 9
Jacksonville, Fla.
– Asheville, N.C.: Begins May 27 (seasonal)
– Belleville-Mid America/St. Louis (Ill.): Begins May 27 (seasonal)
– Columbus, Ohio: Begins May 25 (seasonal)
– Indianapolis: Begins June 2
New Orleans
-Tulsa: Begins May 26 (seasonal)
USA Today
Allegiant expands to 6 new cities with 22 new routes
