• Avelo Airlines Tile
    Avelo Airlines
    IATA/ICAO Code:
    XP/VXP
    Airline Type:
    Ultra-Low-Cost Carrier
    Hub(s):
    Hollywood Burbank Airport, Tweed New Haven Airport, Harry Reid International Airport, Orlando International Airport, Raleigh–Durham International Airport, Wilmington Airport
    Year Founded:
    2018
    CEO:
    Andrew Levy
    Country:
    United States
    Region:
    North America

Avelo opened its Tweed New Haven base, its second after Burbank, last November, with highly obvious sun routes to Florida. And now, half a year later, it is about to introduce its first non-Florida services, with the first four to take off this week.

Six months at New Haven

Avelo is New Haven's only scheduled passenger airline, following the end of American to Philadelphia in September.

This week, Avelo will introduce brand-new routes to Charleston (starting May 5th), Myrtle Beach (5th), Nashville (6th), and Savannah (6th). They'll be joined by Baltimore, Chicago Midway, Raleigh Durham, and Wilmington in the coming weeks.

It has five 147-seat B737-700s stationed at the Connecticut airport, renowned for its short runway of just 5,600 feet (1,707 meters), to support this and other coming routes. They're registered N701VL, N702VL, N703VL, N707VL, and N7834A. The most recent arrival was N707VL, which positioned empty from Burbank on May 4th.

Avelo's New Haven network
Avelo's 14-strong network from New Haven. Image: GCMap.

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Initial performance?

Speaking of the half-year milestone, Andrew Levy, Avelo's Chairman and CEO, said: "Today we are celebrating Avelo’s first six months of flying at Tweed and the new era of convenience, choice, and affordability in air travel now available to Southern Connecticut."

We should always be wary of what press releases say and always try to read between the lines. However, Avelo at New Haven is a pretty easy proposition to sell – fly locally, fly conveniently, fly easily, and fly cheaper – and it does seem popular.

Avelo Adds A New Orlando Base

While traffic figures aren't yet available to me beyond February, a combination of T-100 and booking data shows the following estimated passenger loads and seat load factors.

We should consider fares and ancillaries for a fairer and better picture, but these aren't yet available. As shown in the figure below, December and January both saw additional routes launched, which helps explain the rise in traffic beyond existing route growth.

  • November: 15,317 roundtrip passengers (80.2%)
  • December: 25,487 (82.0%)
  • January: 30,989 (80.0%)
  • February: 28,980 (82.0%)
Avelo's development at New Haven
Will passenger traffic keep up with the additional seat capacity? If not, SLF will drop. Of course, fares are normally played with to help ensure more passengers, higher SLF, more sector revenue, and more ancillary revenue (from more passengers). Source of data: Cirium.

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14 HVN routes this summer

Cirium shows that Avelo has almost 66,000 roundtrip seats for sale at New Haven this May. That's 61% more than in April, with 24,990 more to sell. It corresponds to 13 routes, more than double the number in April. It will have over 109,000 seats across 14 routes by July unless more are announced.

Its network in mid-July will be as follows, with 87 weekly departures or about 12 daily. Assuming five based aircraft, that's an average of five sectors per aircraft per day.

  1. Orlando: 2x daily
  2. Myrtle Beach: 8x weekly (2x daily on Saturdays)
  3. Fort Lauderdale: 1x daily
  4. West Palm Beach: 1x daily
  5. Fort Myers: 1x daily
  6. Baltimore: 6x weekly
  7. Chicago Midway: 6x weekly
  8. Raleigh Durham: 6x weekly
  9. Tampa: 6x weekly
  10. Savannah: 5x weekly
  11. Nashville: 4x weekly
  12. Charleston: 4x weekly
  13. Sarasota: 4x weekly
  14. Wilmington: 3x weekly

Have you flown Avelo yet? If so, share your experiences in the comments.