Allegiant Air says it is going “again to its roots” in 2025 with new jets, new routes and extra to come back this yr.
A part of that evolution means the potential finish of its foray into the resort enterprise.
This week, the corporate introduced it’s searching for buyers or consumers for its Las Vegas-style Sunseeker Resort close to Punta Gorda, Florida — a sprawling property on Charlotte Harbor the corporate as soon as noticed as a vacation spot for passengers it may funnel by way of its intensive route community into Punta Gorda Airport (PGD), a couple of half-hour north of Fort Myers.
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However early struggles for the resort since opening its doorways in late 2023 — and a re-focusing by Allegiant on its core airline enterprise — may see the airline’s resort enterprise find yourself a short-lived gamble.
“Underlying our execution is the deliberate efforts of being laser-focused on our core energy: the airline,” Allegiant CEO Greg Anderson, who assumed his put up final summer season, stated this week on the corporate’s newest earnings name.
Main development in 2025
Regardless of Allegiant’s plans to dump Sunseeker, the corporate is poised for main development in 2025.
And which may be only the start.
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For years, a labor scarcity and plane supply delays at Boeing hindered Allegiant’s hopes to develop its route map — a community lengthy recognized for flights that join underserved U.S. cities with common leisure locations.
However after many months of slashing routes and ready on the jets it could have to enter a real development spurt, the corporate hit a significant tipping level late final yr.
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“Plenty of that is within the rearview,” Allegiant chief industrial officer Drew Wells declared at an trade convention in November.
New 737 MAX deliveries key to development
Over the ultimate few months of 2024, the service took supply of the primary 4 of its long-awaited Boeing MAX 8-200 plane — the 190-seat jet it sees as a linchpin of its future plans.
Allegiant is scheduled to take supply of as much as 13 extra MAX jets over the course of 2025, a spokesperson informed TPG.
With staffing and different infrastructure already in place to assist a bigger airline, Wells stated, the addition of latest plane was akin to flipping a light-weight swap — and the proof is within the numbers.
In October, Allegiant flew lower than it did the prior yr, in response to aviation analytics firim Cirium. The identical was true for November.
However in December, its complete variety of seats flown skyrocketed, 14% over 2023 ranges.
December wasn’t an anomaly. Over the primary six months of 2025, the airline’s complete seats flown is scheduled to be up 16% over this time final yr, per Cirium.
What’s extra, jets that includes the service’s extra-legroom “Allegiant Further” seats fly on 5 instances as many departures in the course of the first quarter of 2025 versus the primary three months of final yr, the corporate shared this week.
Meaning the service shall be higher positioned to seize the sturdy curiosity vacationers have in premium seats with further house — a pattern that is led a slew of low-cost airways to announce new higher-end seating and product choices in current months.
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Extra routes anticipated
After which there’s the matter of the place Allegiant flies: Count on the corporate to announce extra new routes in 2025, Wells informed analysts this week.
“The planning staff is ecstatic to have some flexibility and freedom,” he stated whereas touting the handfuls of latest flights the service will launch over the subsequent few months.
That features the half dozen cities that can quickly be linked by Allegiant to Gulf Shores Worldwide Airport (GUF) on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, the place it’ll quickly develop into the one airline at that coastal airport.
“We have heard from our clients that they journey to the Alabama coast for an annual trip, however presently drive as a lot as 15 hours every approach,” Wells stated this week. “This seems to be rather a lot like prior Allegiant success tales like Punta Gorda, or Destin, Florida.”
Just like Gulf Shores, Punta Gorda had little significant industrial airline service when Allegiant started flying there in 2009. The airline leveraged its place there for a torrid enlargement, right now flying to about 50 locations from the secondary airport within the Fort Myers metro space.
Just one different airline, Solar Nation Airways, flies from the airport, providing seasonal service to its Minneapolis hub in a route it added solely as a part of an obvious turf warfare with Allegiant.
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Regardless, Punta Gorda is the place Allegiant will once more have a big presence in 2025, with dozens of nonstop routes however, it hopes, no resort enterprise within the close to future.
The corporate hopes to dump the Sunseeker property by summer season, executives stated Tuesday — and have fielded curiosity each from potential consumers and firms behind the main resort loyalty applications.
Suffice it to say, 2025 shall be a yr of main evolution for the airline.
“I do not view it a lot as change, as coming again to our roots,” Wells stated in November whereas talking on the Skift Aviation Discussion board in Dallas. “Sort of returning that focus to what made us nice is the place we wish to go.”
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