The stage was set back in March when Allegiant decided to close its crew base at LAX. The airline had kept some flying from LAX to other bases for a time, but that plan is now gone; the last flights leave for Bellingham and Cincinnati at the end of the holidays. Unlike when Frontier abandoned LAX, Allegiant hasn’t really done much to replace it in the region. It appears to be thinking about things quite differently.
Allegiant first began service to Los Angeles (LAX) in May of 2009. It did not dip its toes in. Instead, it announced LAX would become the airline’s sixth base right off the bat. Don’t get me wrong. This is still Allegiant we’re talking about, so it wasn’t that big. In May 2009 it peaked on Saturdays with five flights. Bellingham and Monterrey were the biggest of the 13 destinations with three weekly.
From there, Allegiant, well, it didn’t really do much for some time. In 2010, it took a swing at Long Beach, but that didn’t last. It wasn’t until the summer of 2014 that Allegiant finally tried to grow LAX, but it kept it a largely summer seasonal base. And there it remained until COVID.
Then, well, take a look.
Allegiant Departures and Destinations from the LA Area
Data via Cirium
LAX had its biggest summer ever for Allegiant in 2021, but those weren’t the airline’s only moves. Allegiant entered Orange County when demand dropped at other airlines during COVID. That opened up slot opportunities. From Orange County, Allegiant has had varied success, but the big winner has been Provo which has daily service in winter and up to 10x weekly in summer. That kind of frequency is a rarity in Allegiant’s world.
While this was going on, things got uglier at LAX. Costs continued to rise and Allegiant was pushed out to the remote midfield concourse. Travelers had to check in at Terminal 1.5 and then be bused out to the far western concourse. In the end, Allegiant said that when it had a base, costs were upwards of $50 per passenger. Even without a base, LAX says its costs per enplanement are over $32 per passenger. That doesn’t work for a low-cost operator even if the experience isn’t as bad as that midfield concourse requires.
So, Allegiant has taken its Bellingham flight which attracts Canadians and moved the destination from LAX to Burbank. It has also added a new Provo flight, hoping to capitalize on that route the way that it has done in Orange County. It is clearly not thrilled that Breeze is entering that market, so it is going on the offensive. You don’t see Allegiant picking a fight every day, that’s for sure.
But for the rest of Allegiant’s destinations in the LA area, it’s perfectly fine just walking away. At least, that’s the case for now.
This is very different than what Frontier has done. Frontier, you’ll recall, left LAX during COVID, fed up with the high costs. It decided to be true to its low-cost roots, and it also walked away from Newark.
Frontier Departures and Destinations from the LA Area
Data via Cirium
At the time, Frontier at least had a solid presence in Ontario that it grew quickly, so this wasn’t quite the same level of abandonment as Allegiant. But it was still a big change. At the time, Frontier thought it could use Burbank to replace LAX. It had already shrunk LAX to a much smaller level by the summer of 2021 with service only to Atlanta, Denver, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. All but Atlanta moved over to Burbank, but Denver and Phoenix didn’t even last a year. By early 2023, Frontier went back to LAX, and it went back in a big way, as you can see in the chart above.
Burbank came back as well, but after another quick fail in Phoenix and, this time, San Francisco, it is down to only Denver.
Does this mean that Allegiant is destined to meet the same fate? Will it come crawling back to LAX? I don’t think so. Allegiant is more focused on costs, and they just aren’t sustainable at LAX for an airline like this. (Apparently Frontier has yet to realize that this time around.) Plus, the Burbank routes appear to be far more carefully chosen than Frontier’s plan to just serve the biggest nearby cities in its network.
It seems to me that if these Burbank routes work, Allegiant may grow there. If not, it will most likely just walk away. It doesn’t feel the need to serve the LA area like Frontier does, and it certainly won’t operate in extremely high-cost airports except in very rare circumstances (Newark).
To me, this just looks like a low-cost operator making the right move to focus on low-cost facilities to serve a region. If that doesn’t work, well, that’s ok. There’s no need to force it.. That is likely to be more of a winning strategy than what Frontier is attempting to do in LA.
