Air travellers still will be able to use low-cost carrier Allegiant Air to fly out of Gerald R. Ford International Airport, but the Las Vegas-based airline is closing its base here and reducing the number of destinations it serves.
Phil Johnson, spokesman for the Gerald R. Ford International Airport, said when the airline last April based two planes in Grand Rapids with a staff of about 60 pilots, mechanics and attendants, it was an experiment.
“Their typical pattern is to fly from their four focus cities out to their spoke cities,” Johnson said. “They decided they wanted to try something different. It was a first in their system.”
Basing planes in Grand Rapids allowed local travellers to depart earlier instead of waiting for a plane to arrive from another location. It also allowed Allegiant to fly to more destinations, Johnson said.
But the airline industry has changed over the past year and a half, Johnson said, including increased competition from low-cost competitors AirTran and Frontier and higher fuel costs.
“I think they're realizing, due to the competition and the fuel prices increasing, that this was not a type of operation that they were going to do anywhere else in their system, and it was probably best for them to go ahead and shut it down.”
The base will close at the end October and the airline will cease flights to Myrtle Beach, S.C., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and Punta Gouda, Fla. It will continue to fly to its core cities of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Rolando, Fla., and Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla., Johnson said.
Allegiant Airlines to close its Grand Rapids base, reduce destinations | MLive.com
