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Allegiant expands its Fla. service as Youngstown airport use takes off
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Dickten
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VIENNA
The Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport is flying high as business has improved enough to provide year-round travel to Florida.
The airport recently worked out a deal with its primary carrier, Allegiant Air, to forgo the eight-week hiatus from August through October for flights to Orlando-Sanford International Airport.
“We finally convinced Allegiant ... that putting Orlando on hiatus for eight weeks was ridiculous,” said Dan Dickten, the airport’s executive director of aviation.
Jessica Wheeler, a spokeswoman at Nevada-based Allegiant, said there was enough demand and aircraft availability at Youngstown-Warren to continue year-round trips to Orlando.
There were 94,212 passengers in 2013. That number already was exceeded in August with 94,470.
Dickten said the airport is on course for an estimated 130,000 passengers this year. Those numbers haven’t been that high since 1998, when there were 96,541 passengers, Dickten said.
Airport revenue has increased, including parking concessions. The net revenue for parking as of July was more than $250,000, an 84 percent increase from where parking revenue was as of this time last year. Dickten said other concessions such as car rental and food and beverage also are increasing.
He attributed the increase to low-frequency flights that seat more than a 100 passengers per plane. Load factors, or the amount of people who board a plane, were above 90 percent in June and July with nearly 120 flights combined.
“Anything over 90 percent is great,” he said.
Youngstown-Warren lost its daily airline service in 2003, which had the lowest number of passengers at 15,989.
Although some charter airlines attempted to work with the airport, nothing was successful until Allegiant Air arrived in 2006. Then, there was only one flight out, to Orlando-Sanford, but today there are three additional destinations — Myrtle Beach, S.C.; and St. Petersburg-Clearwater and Punta Gorda near Fort Meyers, both in Florida.
The airport also will expand parking from 550 spaces — it expanded from 360 last year — to 650 for next spring, Dickten said.
Youngstown-Warren is working with Allegiant to include at least one more destination, Dickten said. Possible destinations include Las Vegas, New Orleans and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which is the most likely to happen by the second quarter of next year.
Additionally, the airport still will focus on bringing back daily airline services.
“This will allow us to bring more people for business travel,” he added.
Dickten will attend the World Routes Airline Service Development Conference in Chicago from Sept. 20-23 and meet with five other airlines: American, Delta, Spirit, Sun Country and United.
“We’re getting closer and closer,” Dickten said about returning daily service to the airport. “They have an interest in serving our community.”
The airport also received a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation that provides Youngstown-Warren a $1.2 million revenue guarantee.
That guarantee will assist an airline in sustaining daily airline service.