Vegas hometown airline

This thread is a good reference for people looking for a cheap way to fly to Vegas
Allegiant Air has a rather unique concept in airlines. They fly from a major vacation hub or Focus city (primarily Las Vegas) to small airports. They offer nonstop flights only. They currently serve the following small airports from Las Vegas (some daily others less often).

Appleton/Green Bay, WI	Colorado Springs, CO	Grand Island, NE	Medford, OR	Rockford, IL
Bellingham, WA	Des Moines, IA	Grand Junction, CO	Missoula, MT	Santa Maria, CA
Bentonville/Fayetteville, AR	Duluth, MN	Grand Rapids, MI	Monterey, CA	Shreveport, LA
Billings, MT	Eugene, OR	Great Falls, MT	NW Arkansas	Sioux Falls, SD
Bismarck, ND	Fargo, ND	Idaho Falls, ID	Pasco (Tri-Cities), WA	South Bend, IN
Bozeman, MT	Fort Collins/Loveland, CO	Kalispell, MT	Peoria, IL	Springfield, MO
Casper, WY	Fresno, CA	Laredo, TX	Rapid City, SD	Stockton, CA
Cedar Rapids, IA	Grand Forks, ND	McAllen, TX	Redmond/Bend, OR	Twin Falls, ID
				Wichita, KS

Part of their business strategy is to only fly very short distances so they can get lots of flights in a day. If they would expand to more than 1640 miles it would help give more options to get to Vegas. Here are a few airports that Allegiant already uses that they currently go to 3 or more destinations in Florida or Myrtle Beach NC.

Miles	Destination	Flights
1510	Appleton/Greenbay WI	Vegas
1590	South Bend IN	Vegas
1640	Grand Rapids MI	Vegas
1650	Fort Wayne IN	3+ to Florida/Myrtle Beach
1730	Knocksville TN	3+ to Florida/Myrtle Beach
2100	Greenville NC	3+ to Florida/Myrtle Beach
2150	Lehigh Valley PA	3+ to Florida/Myrtle Beach
2240	Plattsburgh NY	3+ to Florida/Myrtle Beach

I figure that they must expand somehow. The only other way is to add more focus cities or more small nearby airports.

Las Vegas, NV
Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
Los Angeles, CA
Bellingham, WA
Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg, FL
Orlando, FL
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Southwest Florida Coast
Myrtle Beach, SC

As an alternative from the Central, Mountain and Pacific Zones are these airlines

AirTran Airways	Indianapolis, Milwaukee
Alaska Airlines	Bellingham, Portland (OR), Seattle/Tacoma
American Airlines	Chicago-O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles
Continental Airlines	Houston-Intercontinental
Delta Air Lines	Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky, Detroit, Memphis, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Salt Lake City
Delta Connection operated by SkyWest Airlines	Los Angeles, Salt Lake City
Frontier Airlines	Denver, Milwaukee
Great Lakes Airlines	Farmington (NM), Kingman (AZ), Merced
Horizon Air	Santa Rosa
Sun Country Airlines	Minneapolis/St. Paul
United Airlines	Chicago-O'Hare, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco
United Express operated by SkyWest Airlines	Fresno,Palm Springs, San Francisco
US Airways	Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Phoenix
US Airways Express operated by Mesa Airlines	Fresno, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco

hehe funny you mention this. i always take Allegiant Air to and from South Bend, IN. small airport. no hassle. no waits. only downside is that you dont have any choice in the time of flights and they are usually early in the morning.

Allegiant picks up a large number of passengers from Vancouver as well as the rest of BC. It is easier to cross the border and drive the 1/2hr to Bellingham then it is to drive to Vancouver International for a large number of BC residents. I usually use them myself but the savings quickly disappear once you start checking any bags. A longer stay with golf clubs eats up the saving completely.

I love that Las Vegas is a focus city for Southwest. Non-stop flights from major airports straight to Vegas, wonderful!

Quote: bluefire

I love that Las Vegas is a focus city for Southwest. Non-stop flights from major airports straight to Vegas, wonderful!

That is one of the nice things about living here too, it is cheap and convenient to fly just about anywhere. It isn't as good as it used to be, however. No more direct flights to Maui, the Big Island, or any coastal city in Mexico.

Quote: kenarman

the savings quickly disappear once you start checking any bags. A longer stay with golf clubs eats up the saving completely.

Many travelers now take one small carry-on and ship the rest to their hotel via UPS or FedEx.

Quote: FleaStiff

Many travelers now take one small carry-on and ship the rest to their hotel via UPS or FedEx.

Causes problems when crossing the border. Okay on the trip down when we can cross the border via car with our stuff and ship from the US side. Return trip is a problem unless we ship back early enough to guarantee it make it ahead of us. The cheap freight rates disappear once you have to cross the border.

Quote: Wizard

That is one of the nice things about living here too, it is cheap and convenient to fly just about anywhere. It isn't as good as it used to be, however. No more direct flights to Maui, the Big Island, or any coastal city in Mexico.

Southwest used to fly to places like Cancun or Cozumel? Man, that would have been awesome!

Quote: Wizard

It isn't as good as it used to be, however. No more direct flights to Maui, the Big Island, or any coastal city in Mexico.

Almost every airport lost some of it's direct flights. San Diego is down to Vancouver, Calgary and San Jose del Cabo for international cities. They only fly nonstop to 6 East Coast cities now. There are 3 million people in the county. San Diego airport carries 9% more passengers (domestic and international) than just Southwest carries from Vegas.

Vegas is one of those rare cities to add a flight to a new European destination.

Allegiant already is in 18 non focus cities on the East Coast, and another 5 focus cities. It would help if they simply start flying from these cities to Vegas. It would fill a lot of the gap left by USAirways. The small cities would bring in more customers that will stay in the less expensive hotels. Allegiant flies from all these small airports to Orlando now. They are all within 2500 miles of Vegas.


* Allentown, PA
* Bangor, ME
* Chattanooga, TN
* Elmira-Corning, NY
* Fort Wayne, IN
* Greensboro, NC
* Greenville/Spartanburg, SC
* Hagerstown, MD
* Huntington (Tri-State), WV
* Knoxville, TN
* Lexington, KY
* Montréal, QC/Plattsburgh, NY
* Owensboro, KY
* Roanoke, VA
* Toledo, OH
* Tri-Cities, TN/VA
* Wilmington, NC
* Youngstown, OH

USAirways? Not a big loss. (kidding... kind of). ;)

Quote: bluefire

Southwest used to fly to places like Cancun or Cozumel? Man, that would have been awesome!

It wasn't Southwest that flew there. It was mostly various bankrupt airlines like National and ATA. The cities in Mexico with direct flights used to be Cabo San Lucas and various other cities on the west coast, I don't remember which. I think Cancun/Cozumel is more targetted towards the US east coast. The Mexican and Hawaiian airlines also cut back on their service to Vegas.

Quote: Wizard

It wasn't Southwest that flew there. It was mostly various bankrupt airlines like National and ATA. The cities in Mexico with direct flights used to be Cabo San Lucas and various other cities on the west coast, I don't remember which. I think Cancun/Cozumel is more targetted towards the US east coast. The Mexican and Hawaiian airlines also cut back on their service to Vegas.

Cancun gets tons of flights from New York and other East Coast cities. Also some from Europe, not counting charters.

There are daily flights to Vegas from Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. Curiously one of the Mexicana flights makes a stop at San Jose del Cabo, but apparently not to pick up or drop any passengers. From either of these three cities you can find flights to any of the coastal resorts.

The airlines flying to Vegas are Mexicana (Mex City and Guadalajara), Aeromexico (Mex City and Monterrey) and Viva Aerobus (from Monterrey).

Quote: Wizard

It wasn't Southwest that flew there. It was mostly various bankrupt airlines like National and ATA. The cities in Mexico with direct flights used to be Cabo San Lucas and various other cities on the west coast, I don't remember which. I think Cancun/Cozumel is more targetted towards the US east coast. The Mexican and Hawaiian airlines also cut back on their service to Vegas.

The Mexican service is generally concentrating in LAX and Houston Intercontinental. All of the other airports from San Diego,Phoenix, Denver and Las Vegas has been dramatically reduced. I think that the USA and Mexico need to sign some kind of agreement similar to what was signed with USA and Canada to increase service between the countries. It used to be much harder to fly to Canada, and now you can get there from a hundred airports.

I don't know that Cancun/Cozumel specifically targets the US east coast or if it is a question of not having as much competition with Hawaii. I mean from Vegas or LAX is about 400-500 miles closer to Cancun than Honolulu so the extra 60-90 minutes on the jet doesn't matter. But they used to do those single day trips from BWI to Cancun (fly out early, spend 6 hours on the beach and fly back).

Until recently you couldn't fly non-stop to Hawaii from anywhere on the East Coast, although now I think they go there from Atlanta.

Cabo is different from Cancun. Most beaches are almost unswimmable (very dangerous) and it is more expensive and more golf oriented.

The reason I said Cancun caters to the US east coast is because Americans on the west coast who want to go to Mexico tend to go with Cabo, Acapulco, Puerto Varata, Mazatlan, and Ixtapa (forgive the spelling). I don't have any statistics on this, just anecdotal evidence from having lived on both coasts.

I can't compare it to Cancun, but I really like San Jose del Cabo, which is about 30 kilometers from Cabo San Lucas. Great beaches and not as loud, Americanized, and touristy as Cabo San Lucas.

Quote: Wizard

I can't compare it to Cancun, but I really like San Jose del Cabo, which is about 30 kilometers from Cabo San Lucas. Great beaches and not as loud, Americanized, and touristy as Cabo San Lucas.

San Jose del Cabo was one of the very few towns in Baja that was there before the 20th century, so it has a lot of romantic charm.

I have looked at the statistics and Cancun was much higher by a huge margin than any other Mexican beach resort. I have been to Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo, Veracruz, Puerto Escondido, Acapulco and Merida. I've never been to Ixtapa.

But to be fair Cancun does attract more Europeans (especially British) than the other resort areas. That may tip the numbers. There seems to be a lot of cruising from California. Cancun is not a primary cruising spot from Florida, as it is too far and they don't have good piers.

Mexico started 2009 beset with negative news coverage about the drug war. Soon after the media frenzy died down, the country faced a travel ban resulting from the H1N1 or swine flu outbreak. As a result, Mexico recorded a nearly 11 percent decline in U.S. visitors or a total of about 5.2 million in 2009.

Allegiant is the largest of the ten small airlines that serve the airport. There is no way for them to replace the service lost by USAirways which gave up 5.3 million R/T passengers in two years.

1	Allegiant	1,847,754
2	Alaska	961,113
3	JetBlue	765,192
4	Westjet	675,046
5	AirTran	547,925
6	Frontier	534,897
7	Virgin	451,152
8	Spirit	205,922
9	Midwest	118,059
10	Sun Country	99,616
	Total	6,206,676

The USAirways loss was the bulk of the lost passengers into McCarran. I don't think that the city can survive with more major bankruptcies with some more air service.

Year	Air Psgrs	Visitors	Delegates	Rooms	Occup
2000	36,865,866	35,849,691	10.75%	124,270	89.10%
2001	35,179,960	35,017,317	14.32%	126,610	84.70%
2002	35,009,011	35,071,504	14.56%	126,787	84.00%
2003	36,265,932	35,540,126	15.92%	130,482	85.00%
2004	41,441,531	37,388,781	15.31%	131,503	88.60%
2005	44,267,370	38,566,717	15.99%	133,186	89.20%
2006	46,304,376	38,914,889	16.21%	132,605	89.70%
2007	47,729,527	39,196,761	15.84%	132,947	90.40%
2008	44,074,642	37,481,552	15.74%	140,529	86.00%
2009	40,469,012	36,351,469	12.36%	148,941	81.50%