Allegiant Stands Up to LAX for Its High Fees, Shuts Its Base

I recently had a conversation with someone at an airline outside the US who was lamenting how airports in the US just keep raising costs to unsustainable levels, and there aren’t enough checks to prevent it. The airlines have largely rolled over or even approved of the spending… but not all. Allegiant is apparently the hero we all need as it has now told LAX that it is shutting its crew base and scaling back flights since high fees make the operation unsustainable.

It appears that Aero Crew News may have broken the story — I can’t find anything earlier — that the airline would shut its base. According to Ishrion Aviation, flights to Billings, Des Moines, Kalispell, Laredo, Medford, Memphis, Pasco, Rapid City, and Rockford are all going away or already gone. It’s also noted that Springfield (MO) and Tulsa are ending after summer. This isn’t shown in Cirium data yet, but I did double check booking windows on Allegiant’s website to confirm.

I asked Allegiant for comment on this move, and a spokesperson said this:

We will cease base operations at LAX Sept. 2. At Allegiant, we consider our bases to be long-term commitments. We understand that our team members make important decisions about where to live and raise their families, taking into account the locations of our bases. However, when airport costs surpass our average fare, it results in higher costs for our customers, and we’ve found that it no longer provides the value they expect from Allegiant. As an ultra-low-cost airline, we focus on keeping our costs low as industry dynamics evolve, ensuring we remain a carrier that our team members and customers can trust long-term.  Paying approximately $50 per departing passenger in LAX-related station costs alone is no longer sustainable. These costs are set to rise further in the coming years with ongoing capital projects at LAX. We will continue to serve Los Angeles with all flights operating as turns from other bases, providing our customers with the exceptional service they have come to expect from Allegiant.

That’s right, Allegiant says it is costing the airline $50 per departing passenger in LAX-related costs alone. This is remarkably high, and it’s completely unsustainable for almost any airline flying short-haul, let alone a low-cost operator.

According to the airport’s proposed budget, cost per enplanement should “only” be $32.52. I put that in quotes, because it is still quite high. It’s just far short of what Allegiant says it is paying. Of course, having a base means that Allegiant needs to lease more space, so there are added costs that lead to the higher number. I don’t think this is likely to be a lie.

Keep in mind that Allegiant is paying this while also receiving a pretty poor experience at the airport itself. After all, Allegiant is one of the airlines that has its check-in counter in Terminal 1.5. After checking in, travelers go through security and then have to take a bus all the way out to the midfield concourse in the Bradley Terminal. That may not matter for a long-haul flight where people don’t mind getting there early. But on a short hop? That does not work out very well.

So now, Allegiant is standing up to the tyranny of it all and closing the base. This doesn’t mean it is exiting the airport, but it will now operate flights from other bases. Here’s how things stack up as of now:

^{Allegiant LAX Route map generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
Yellow flies this summer, green flies year-round, red is exited}

When you look at the map, you do see that shorter flights tend to go away compared to longer ones. Of course, when it touches another base like Bellingham that’s not the case, but it’s just a general trend. And this is really no surprise. Longer flights tend to generate more revenue, and that makes it easier to absorb the high passenger costs at LAX.

Other airlines that operate at LAX have had mixed reactions to the rising costs. The legacy airlines probably don’t hate it. They generate more revenue than the low-cost operators, so rising costs just helps them push out low-cost competition. That’s reflected in the numbers. Comparing July 2025 to July 2019, United seats are up 7.9 percent while Delta is basically flat. (American is down a lot, but that’s because it dismantled its Pacific hub.)

But look at the lower cost operators and just see how much they’ve cut seats in the LAX market during that period.

• Southwest is down 32 percent
• Alaska is down 23 percent
• Spirit is down 12 percent
• Sun Country is down 36 percent
• Allegiant is down 15 percent.

And it’s not just a cut in seats. There is also a trend toward longer flights in general. Southwest’s stage length is up 15 percent, Spirit is up 9 percent, and Allegiant was up 20 percent before making its cuts. (Alaska is way down, but that’s because it has shed a lot of the legacy Virgin America long-hauls that lost money.)

You may have noticed I didn’t include Frontier, and that’s because Frontier has completely changed course. It used to be that Frontier was the airline that fought airport costs. It didn’t fly much to LAX before the pandemic — just doing Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Denver in summer 2019 — but it was so fed up with high costs at the airport that it left in October 2021. It left Newark as well for similar reasons. But then, it caved.

After Frontier’s performance tanked, it realized it had to start chasing revenue. So, it went back into those high-cost airports, because that’s where the revenue is. From LAX it has grown significantly, and it’s not even doing the usual sub-daily flying that it’s known for. Here’s the current summer plan:

• 2x daily: Atlanta, Denver, Las Vegas
• 1x daily: Chicago/O’Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston/IAH, New York/JFK, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland (OR), Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle

It wants big airports with a lot of revenue where it thinks it can cover those airport costs. I know, you look at a place like Las Vegas and scratch your head, right? But Frontier has no base in LA, so it probably just needs to route airplanes from its nearest base, which happens to be Vegas. Most of these are big cities that skew further away.

What may be more notable is what has not survived. Sacramento and San Jose go away this spring. Those are the kinds of short-haul routes that just can’t cover the costs of operating, especially at a low-fare carrier.

Spirit has done the same, abandoning the LAX west coast network to places like Oakland, Portland (OR), Reno, Salt Lake City, San Jose, and Seattle. And of course, we know that JetBlue has pulled out of all short-haul from LAX.

Perhaps the biggest tell is what Southwest has done. Every single market under 1,000 miles has shrunk compared to pre-pandemic. Vegas seats are down nearly 20 percent, Oakland is down more than 40 percent. Denver is the only one not down double digits at -7.6 percent.

Yes there are other factors including reduced demand, but think about it this way… for flights under 1,000 miles on Southwest, LAX seats are down 40 percent while Burbank’s are down 23 percent, Ontario seats are down 9 percent, and Orange County is actually up a bit.

Allegiant has seen all of this and decided to make a clear statement that it is not going to sit around and lose money any longer. LAX may very well shrug. Allegiant isn’t a major player at the airport, and there are plenty of others who won’t put up a fight. But LAX’s spending spree has changed the face of the airport and made lower fares and shorter-haul that much tougher to operate.