It’s official.
Avelo Airlines will offer flights to five Florida cities from Wilmington Airport beginning on Feb. 1.
The dozen-jet airline will base one of its dozen jets at the airport as it works to build an East Coast base in Delaware.
Reservations are now being taken for flights to Orlando, Fort Meyers, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, and West Palm Beach. Promotional fares will start at $49 one way.
Nonstops to the above cities will be twice weekly, with the exception of three-day-a-week flights to Orlando. The airline is expected to employ 35 in Delaware. The airline flies Boeing 737 jets that seat about 150 passengers.
The service was announced in an event that featured Avelo founder and CEO Andrew Levy, along with officials that included Gov. John Carney.
At the kick-off event that featured Avelo jet on the airport’s tarmac at the airport, officials said Avelo’s entry was the result of a two-year effort that involved airport manager, The Delaware River and Bay Authority, along with state and county government officials.
During that period, Levy was positioning Avelo as a low-cost carrier that will feed passengers to popular destinations from smaller airports like Wilmington.
Avelo was launched at the Hollywood-Burbank Airport and later set up bases in New Haven, CT and Orlando. Wilmington will be its fourth base.
Stephen Williams, the deputy director for the DRBA, said Avelo hits a “sweet spot” in long-running attempts to attract and retain airline service at the airport, thanks to its strategy of serving popular destinations from smaller airports.
Avelo is focusing on airports near major metropolitan areas, Levy said. He pointed to the success of the airline at a New Haven airport that previously had no scheduled service.
In addition to Florida cities, Avelo now flies to 14 destinations from New Haven that include Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport and Midway Airport in Chicago.
Despite serving cities on both the East and West coasts, Avelo does not have flights that connect the two areas,
Levy said the recent exit of twice-weekly Orlando flights from Frontier did not factor into the decision to fly into what is widely known as New Castle Airport, although he conceded that if the other airline stuck around, Avelo might not have immediately offered Orlando service.
The event had its pep rally moments with frequent references to the winning ways of the Philadelphia Phillies and Eagles, with speakers calling for support of the airline and the airport.
Avelo represents the third try in the past decade to launch and keep airline service.
Frontier Airlines offered flights to multiple destinations the first time around in 2014 and 2015 but later narrowed service to Florida and later dropped all flights.
The carrier returned last year with two and three-time-a-week flights to Orlando. Frontier never expanded that schedule and exited Delaware earlier this year.
In the meantime, Frontier had added more than two-dozen destinations from Philadelphia International Airport.
