By Dawn Gilbertson
May 17, 2023
Ghosting isn’t just a hazard of job interviews or dating.
ILLUSTRATION BY VIRGINIA GABRIELLI
Carrie Hemler says her airline ghosted her. The Pennsylvania teacher scooped up cheap tickets on Avelo Airlines in April for a family vacation in August. Less than a month later, the airline sent an email saying it was suspending the Wilmington, Del.-to-Florida route in early July.
“We’re like, what are we going to do?” Hemler says.
Airlines big and small shake up their route networks regularly. The pace of change is especially dizzying at budget airlines like Avelo, Breeze and Frontier, with new flights disappearing and leaving some travelers in a lurch. Hemler is now flying Avelo to Fort Lauderdale instead of West Palm Beach a few days earlier than planned, and will have to rent a car to get to her mother’s house instead of getting a ride from family.
It’s all part of the price of flying the airline equivalent of a test lab. Rapidly growing low-cost airlines aggressively and unapologetically experiment with mostly underserved, unproven routes.
They introduce new flights with local airport fanfare and eye-catching fares—one-way flights for as little as $19 or $39 before fees—but pull the plug quickly and quietly if they don’t draw enough passengers at the right price. Sometimes it’s a route or flight frequency that gets the ax, other times an airport.
Now you see them
Two-year-old Avelo began flights from Lexington, Ky., and Newport News, Va., to Florida in late 2022. By mid-April, it was no longer serving either airport. Avelo has exited seven airports since it began, though part of that is due to its launch during the pandemic, the airline says.
“We are purposely trying to do [flight] combinations that have probably, in many cases, never been done before. There’s going to be cases where you just get it wrong,” says Avelo Chief Executive Andrew Levy, who previously worked for Allegiant and United. “We’re like any other business. We’ve got to make the numbers work.”
Levy says Avelo struggled in Lexington because of competition to Florida from Allegiant and flights at nearby airports. He says the airline couldn’t give seats away between Lexington and Tampa, for example.
Breeze, which turns two next week, trumpeted three cross-country routes from Westchester County, N.Y., a year ago, with service set to begin last fall. A San Francisco route was canceled before it began, another to Las Vegas lasted a month and the third, to Los Angeles, ended in April. The airline, which still offers flights from Westchester to Florida and other destinations, blames factors including congested New York airspace, limited gates and delayed aircraft deliveries.
In Phoenix, Frontier Airlines has already cut three of 10 nonstop flights it launched less than six months ago with introductory fares as low as $19, ending flights to and from Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Fort Lauderdale. Frontier says it periodically reviews and updates routes based on demand, seasonality and other factors.
The airlines have plenty of successes, too. Avelo now offers 17 destinations from New Haven, Conn., where it is the only commercial airline, and says overall demand in Wilmington is strong. The company just posted its third monthly profit, Levy says.
Charleston, S.C., has been a hit for Breeze, and the airline is seeing success with new flights in Hartford, Conn., and Providence, R.I., says Lukas Johnson, chief commercial officer. In the next few weeks, it will unveil 37 routes, 30 of them new and the rest returning seasonal routes.
Johnson says Breeze has exited two airports: Oklahoma City and San Antonio.
Limited leverage
Airports, which often subsidize new service, aren’t thrilled when budget flights disappear. Yet any service is coveted, especially in smaller communities that have lost service from major airlines and their regional partners, says Brad DiFiore, managing director at Ailevon Pacific Aviation Consulting.
“You’re willing to take the good with the bad, because there’s been a lot of good,” he says.
This see-what-sticks scheduling means buying tickets on these airlines can be a bit of a gamble, especially if your schedule isn’t flexible. I’ve flown them all and booked my mom on a $99 one-way ticket from Hartford to Phoenix on Breeze. The only hiccup was a lengthy weather delay.
“I just flew two weeks ago from Palm Springs [Calif.] to Eugene [Ore.], now they don’t fly there anymore,” one traveler posted on Avelo’s Facebook page in early May. “How often are flight locations going to be changed? How do you book anything in advance?”
The budget airlines say they always aim to fly the published schedule, and say they try to give travelers as much advance notice as possible when flights are pulled. Unlike major U.S. airlines, which sell tickets up to a year in advance, their windows are shorter. Avelo is selling tickets through Halloween, Breeze through mid-November.
Avelo didn’t give Lexington travelers much time, though. The airline announced its exit in late January—the last flights were on Feb. 21. Levy says the number of travelers inconvenienced was “minimal” given the lackluster demand.
In Newport News, Levy says the airline could have cut its losses and stopped service in February when it decided to leave the airport, but it continued service through Easter.
“We didn’t want to disrupt people’s vacations,” he says.
Passengers are entitled to a refund or rebooking on the airline when their flight is canceled, though the latter isn’t always an option given limited flight schedules. It’s the same thorny issue facing travelers on budget airlines when bad weather or maintenance issues strike.
Another thing to keep in mind: A refund of those cheap tickets isn’t going to go too far on other airlines. Hemler paid $416.70 for three round-trip tickets on Avelo to Florida, including reserved seats. If the Fort Lauderdale option on Avelo wasn’t available, she would have had to buy tickets on another airline to West Palm Beach.
The going rate this week for a nonstop flight on American from Philadelphia in early August: $340 per person in the main cabin.
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