It’s a far cry from the early days when Avelo had just one base in Burbank. The airline now has five, but it’s the most recent, growing addition of Raleigh-Durham which stands out. This base is different than any of Avelo’s other bases, and it could become an interesting experiment… if Avelo is willing to add just a little complexity. (I don’t imagine the airline is, but it’s something to consider.)
What’s so different about Raleigh-Durham (RDU)? I’ll let the route maps answer that question for you. Here are the current maps for each of the airline’s five bases.
Don’t worry if you can’t read the city names, because those don’t matter. The difference between Raleigh-Durham and the rest is that RDU is the only one that has a route map that could actually turn into a hub structure with flights going in different directions.
Burbank, Orlando, and New Haven largely sit in the corners of the country, unable to create much in the way of connecting opportunities. (Ok, ok, maybe Brownsville could connect, but that’s a minor diversion.) And while Wilmington (DE) could become that powerhouse mid-Atlantic connecting point it has always dreamed… no it can’t. Demand going north is, uh, shall we say, sparse. (It’s unclear that demand going south is all that much better.)
In RDU, Avelo has a dynamic, good-sized city which has received some attention from nearly every one of the big airlines at some point or another, but none have really gone all-in. Avelo now sees that opportunity to step in and serve those smaller markets where others haven’t bothered, like Manchester and Rochester. Any ‘chester will do.
Looking at Q3 of 2022, the largest market from RDU was Boston with 744 passengers per day each way (PDEW). Manchester had only 26, but considering Avelo only flies it two days a week, that’s not that bad if people change behavior to fly the nonstop. Rochester (NY) has 42 a day which is even better (and surprising).
As decent as that may sound, now imagine routing some of those people on connections down to Florida. Avelo is already flying from RDU to six cities in Florida, and I imagine it couldn’t hurt to have a few people from Rochester and Manchester on those flights. But this is Avelo, and that would require a change in mindset.
Avelo schedules its out-and-back network to drive aircraft utilization. That means it doesn’t have to worry about connections getting in the way. For example, on Thursday and Sunday, one of the airplanes starts out at 7:30am from RDU going up to Manchester. Nothing can connect into that. On the return, however, it leaves at 10a and gets back at noon, creating an opportunity to connect to that 12:25pm flight to Fort Lauderdale or the 12:35pm to Orlando.
It’s hard to imagine Avelo even considering changing schedules to cater to connections, but as the airline grows and adds airplanes, it will have the ability to make more connections just occur naturally. That’s something the airline could consider as it thinks about how big to make RDU over time.
Of course, this does add operational complexity as well. You can bet that people flying from Manchester to Orlando are going to have checked bags, so you need infrastructure in RDU to be able to handle that inevitability. Again, it seems unlikely that Avelo would do this, at least not now when the opportunities are so limited.
One thing we do know, however, is that RDU appears to be working for the airline. It opened its base there with a single 737-700 on February 15. Just a month later it is adding a second airplane, this time a larger 737-800.
Serving secondary markets from medium-sized cities is something that a variety of airlines dabble in, including Frontier and even Allegiant. But while Frontier does allow connections, it is highly unlikely the airline is going to try to cater to that outside of its largest cities like Denver. Allegiant still doesn’t touch connections. That could create an opportunity for Avelo if it’s feeling sporty.
The one wildcard for me is how Southwest reacts to some of this flying. Southwest is the largest airline at RDU, and every city Avelo serves from RDU can be reached on Southwest, some requiring connections. It’s not that hard to connect two dots that are already in the system. That being said, I can’t imagine Avelo’s growth is something that would cause Southwest to alter course as of now. The markets just aren’t big enough for the daily kind of service that Southwest usually flies, but weekend-only flying is always a possibility.
It seems like there should be room for an airline like Avelo in this market. I’m glad to see the airline taking this step, and I do wonder where this leads in the end.
