Avelo Airlines is expected to announce expanded service and new destinations from Wilmington Airport (ILG) on Thursday.
According to a media alert from airport operator the Delaware River and Bay Authority, the airline will nearly triple its direct flight offerings from the airport, which has been renamed to reflect the return of commercial airline service.
It follows stronger-than-expected passenger traffic from Wilmington to five Florida destinations, Orlando, West Palm Beach, Fort Meyers, Tampa, and Fort Lauderdale. Avelo currently offers flights two days a week, with Orlando getting three flights. The airline has kept base fares low but charges extra for checked luggage, seat assignments, and bags going into overhead bins.
Officials of the airline had previously indicated a future expansion from Wilmington would involve basing another plane and flight crew in Delaware, up from one jet that overnights here.
Avelo’s strategy calls for basing its Boeing 737 jets at smaller airports and offering non-stop flights, and heavily emphasizing Florida.
Thursday’s announcement could mean adding to the two to three-time-a-week frequencies of Wilmington flights and adding service to Melbourne on Florida’s Space Coast and Daytona Beach to the north. Avelo recently added the two airports to its network.
Avelo’s greatest success has come in New Haven, CT. The New England airport that formerly had no airline service now has dozens of daily Avelo flights, mainly to Florida. The Wilmington airport ended up hosting Avelo flights late last weekend that could not land in New Haven due to heavy flog.
New Haven is not as close to a major airport as Wilmington-New Castle, but is facing competition from Hartford, where another small city airline, Breeze has set up a hub. Much of northern Delaware is closer to the Philly Airport than some areas around Philadelphia. The airline’s strategy is to peel passengers from Philadephia International Airport with low base fares and fewer hassles. Philadelphia has among the nation’s highest airport parking rates.
Frontier Airlines, which formerly operated fights to Orlando from ILG twice a week, has responded with lower fares from Philadelphia. Frontier may be vulnerable to competition from Avelo, given its struggles with customer service and decisions that include ending telephone customer service.
Avelo struggled with those issues last weekend as it faced fogged-in conditions at New Haven and had to bus some passengers from New Castle.
Airport officials said Avelo got off to a much faster start than Frontier’s second attempt at service, reaching the 10,000-passenger mark in its second month, compared to about 10 for Frontier.
Avelo offers flights on the East and West coasts but has no plans to connect the two areas of the country.
