While long-awaited airline startup Breeze moves closer and closer to flight, two more new contenders have popped up despite the pandemic-induced crash of airline business. One of the newcomers will start flying this month.
Avelo Airlines, based at Los Angeles area’s Burbank Airport, started selling tickets Thursday for flights beginning April 28 with service from Burbank to eleven western cities. Similarly to Breeze’s playbook, Avelo is picking routes where majors don’t fly, or don’t offer non-stop service. Initial destinations include Eugene, Oregon; Bozeman, Montana; Mesa/Phoenix, Arizona, Ogden Utah and several California cities. All flights will be on Boeing 737-800s.
The second startup, Connect Airlines, won’t fly until October, and has a similar plan for flying from a single hub, in this case Toronto’s close-in Billy Bishop Airport, where some of its routes will complete directly with Porter Airways, which already flies to some of the same northeast, midwest and Canadian cities. Both airlines base their service on Canada-built Q400 turboprops. It is a project of Waltzing Matilda Aviation, a long-time charter operator.
UPDATE:
In an interview with The Points Guy website, Avelo chief Andrew Levy explained that the new airline’s basing itself at Burbank is nearly a fluke. Its original plan, he said had focused on Wilmington, Delaware, whose airport is easily accessible to Philadelphia, Baltimore and South Jersey markets.
The switch to a secondary airport in the Los Angeles area came about because of other airlines’ deep cuts to Burbank service, with JetBlue cutting all Burbank service and Delta and other cutting back, leaving gaps in the market. Levy pointed out that for many people in the LA area, from central LA to the San Fernando Valley, Burbank is actually closer than LAX.