It’s been almost three months since Avelo announced it would start serving McKinney (DTX) to the northeast of Dallas. It has not even started flying yet — that comes in November — but it is adding flights already. This third-based aircraft will open up four new destinations. Let’s take a deeper look.
First, I have to give the obligatory map so we can set the scene.
The Metroplex is a big place, as anyone who flies into DFW can see clearly since there aren’t any hills to block your view for hundreds of miles in any direction. DFW and Love Field are the two commercial airports with scheduled flights these days, but Avelo will open up DTX — am I the only one who keeps reading that as Dirty TeXas? — in November with a pure leisure schedule to Las Vegas plus four Florida airports: Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Orlando, and Tampa.
But now, starting in December, it will use its new airplane to start some less obvious markets. Here’s what DTX gets:
- Atlanta 4x weekly from Dec 16
- Denver 4x weekly from Dec 16
- Nashville 2x weekly from Dec 17
- New Orleans 2x weekly from Dec 17
The first thing you might think is that this is not enough flying to fully utilize that third B737. In reality, there are some pretty hefty gaps in flying between four and six hours, four days a week. (It doesn’t fly on Tuesday at all.) I assume there is going to be more coming. The second thing that comes to mind is that these aren’t necessarily pure leisure markets in the same way the first ones were.
I took a look at daily passengers each way in Cirium’s DOT O&D data for the year ending June 2026, and here’s what it looks like:
Dallas Metroplex PDEW by Destination TTM Ending June 2026
Data via Cirium
The four largest markets are not getting any service in this round. That’s not a surprise for New York City. After all, Avelo knows it can’t serve secondary airports in a destination market, only an origin. So New Haven is out (for now), and Avelo isn’t going to get into LaGuardia. You could argue that in LA, the issue is more that Avelo doesn’t serve the region at all anymore today. But then again, it didn’t fly to Las Vegas when it announced that McKinney flight. And it does serve both Chicago/O’Hare and Washington/Dulles, so that wouldn’t explain why those aren’t served.
Maybe it’s the competition. New York has five airlines while Chicago, LA, and Washington have four, all including Frontier. But Atlanta also has four airlines, and Frontier has more service in that airport than any of the others. On top of this, Atlanta is the one market from close-by Love Field that is served by two airlines (Delta and Southwest). So that doesn’t make much sense either.
It could just be distance, I suppose. But alas, Chicago would be closer than Las Vegas which is already filed. So… I’m running out of ideas. But for some reason, Avelo is high on the Atlanta market.
Denver is less surprising since that is the gateway to a lot of ski markets and drunken weekends. It feels more leisurely. And that is reflected in the chart you’ll remember I gave last time
Dallas Metroplex % of Nonstop Tickets Purchased > 90 days in Advance
DOT O&D Data via Visual Approach, markets include all DAL/DFW > 150 PDEW in Q1 2026
Denver has a fair number of bookings coming more than 90 days out, and those are going to be the kind of leisure bookings that Avelo hopes to feast. Atlanta is not to be found on this list. Of course, New Orleans and Nashville are both on this list, and they are big markets. But Phoenix seems like more of a surprise that it’s not on the list.
Overall, Avelo seems to be following a clear path here with those leisure-heavy markets, but Atlanta doesn’t quite fit the mold in the same way. Maybe it’s just a test, and it was the best option for some reason I can’t figure out. Regardless, Avelo decided that McKinney was the best place to put that new airplane. I’m told that was always the plan, but we’ll see how growth moves forward once the first flight actually takes off.
