Budget carrier Avelo Airlines to end service to West Coast amid financial struggles ?

• Avelo Airlines will stop operations out of Salem in August, leaving the community again without a commercial operator after a years-long effort to return service.
• The announcement Monday morning caught city officials and business leaders by surprise.
• Avelo officials said the flight cancellations as of Aug. 10 followed a company decision to close a hub in Burbank and end all West Coast service later this year.
• Avelo also received subsidies for its operations through a pool of money from a federal grant and private contributions, available for the first two years of operations.
• Protestors claimed credit for the shutdown, which followed sustained protests in Salem and other cities about the airline’s service in other states to federal immigration agency-ICE.
•  All customers who have flights booked can visit the Manage Trips section of their website to cancel their flight and receive a refund.

Low cost carrier Avelo Airlines has announced that it's going to close its base at Hollywood Burbank Airport and end all West Coast operations by December. 

Instead, the company will be shifting its focus to its flights in the eastern half of the country. The carrier said, financial struggles in a competitive market is the reason behind the closure.

The carrier said it will reduce its Burbank operation to one aircraft on Aug. 12 and end all flights by Dec. 2. The decision effectively ends Avelo's West Coast presence, where the airline launched its first flight more than four years ago. 

"Our last flight at EUG will be December 1, 2025. Customers who have flights booked can visit the Manage Trips section of our website to cancel their flight and receive a refund," Avelo said in a statement.

Avelo Airlines launched in April 2021 with three destinations from the airport using Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

The announcement comes as Avelo has faced criticism over its agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to conduct deportation flights.

The Houston-based airline began federal deportation flights from Mesa Gateway Airport outside Phoenix in May under a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ICE agreement sparked boycott campaigns and protests at airports across the country.

Since May, the airline has been carrying out deportation flights in Arizona for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

• Is it really the financial struggle that's forcing the Avelo Airlines to stop West Coast operations ?
• Some believe that the federal government is overpaying for ICE flights which would then be more lucrative than flying scheduled air service.
• Avelo could have cancelled the west coast operations for the fleet readiness to operate the deportation flights needed over the next few years.

Shortly after starting their flights for ICE, Avelo began offering nonstop flights between New Haven, Connecticut, and Portland.

A spokesperson for Avelo says their Homeland Security charters are only based out of Arizona and are not affiliated with Portland Jetport commercial services.

The aircraft currently stationed at Burbank will be moved to markets on the East Coast, where the company sees "significantly more opportunity to continue our path to sustainable cash flow generation," according to the statement.

"We believe the continuation service from BUR in the current operating environment will not deliver adequate financial returns in a highly competitive backdrop," an Avelo spokesperson said in a statement.

The spokesperson said the airline had invested "significant time, resources and efforts" to improve West Coast financial results but had not achieved necessary returns.

The closure will affect all West Coast flights, meaning routes to destinations like Eureka, Calif., Salem, Ore., and other regional airports will end.

Avelo, after launching operations in the year 2021 amid Covid-19 pandemic, operated a fleet of Boeing 737 planes from smaller airports to serve routes ignored by major airlines.

While Avelo will no longer serve the western US, the airline will continue to serve an east coast network of over 40 cities both domestic and international that will extend from Manchester, New Hampshire in the northeast to the Dominican Republic and Cancun to the south and as far west as Dallas and Chicago.

The news about Avelo came on the same day that Palm Springs International Airport announced United Airlines is adding new seasonal flights between the desert and Newark Liberty International Airport in the New York City area beginning in December.

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