Fast-growing Allegiant expands to Puerto Rico and Trenton, N.J.
Allegiant's route map continues to accumulate more dots.
The leisure carrier will begin flying from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Trenton, N.J., cities that join Allegiant’s network as part of a six-route expansion to be announced Thursday. Allegiant also will increase service on three of its existing routes.
“It’s really exciting for us.to be adding these new cities and flights,” Lukas Johnson, Allegiant’s VP of network and pricing, says in an interview with Today in the Sky.
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Allegiant’s expansion to Trenton comes just a month after it announced new service to another new destination in New Jersey: Newark Liberty International. Johnson said Allegiant’s addition of Trenton the helps it round out its offerings in the mid-Atlantic, a region where the carrier wants to expand its footprint.
“The mid-Atlantic was a huge hole for us in our network,” Johnson says. “It’s one area we’re trying to fill this year.”
Trenton becomes will become the third mid-Atlantic airport to join Allegiant’s route map in 2016, joining Newark and Baltimore-Washington International (BWI).
Allegiant Air breaks into Newark as it adds 3 cities to route map
Allegiant’s expansion to Trenton also will end Frontier’s monopoly on commercial flights there. Frontier, another “ultra low-cost carrier” that began flying from Trenton in 2012, is currently the only airline offering regularly scheduled service there.
“It’s not the first time we’ve been the second carrier or the second ultra-low-cost carrier to an airport,” Johnson says. “For us, the time is right. We expect to carry not only vacationers down to the destinations, but plenty of ‘friends and family’ (passengers visiting loved ones).”
Allegiant’s Trenton service will begin Nov. 3 with nonstop flights to the Florida destinations of Orlando Sanford and Punta Gorda. A day later Allegiant will add service to St. Petersburg, Fla.
Though Trenton sits just about 40 miles from downtown Philadelphia and about 65 from New York City, Johnson says Allegiant’s main focus is on developing the broader base of Trenton travelers.
“For us, it makes more sense to be going into these areas that we think are a little bit underserved,” he says about Trenton. “Well over a million people would say Trenton is their closest home airport. Those are the people we’re targeting. We’re not targeting Philadelphia or Newark.”
Allegiant’s service to Puerto Rico will begin Dec. 14, when the airline launches four weekly nonstop flights between Orlando Sanford and San Juan.
“It’s going to be our first scheduled service to the Caribbean,” Johnson says. “We’re very excited about it, and it’s coming from our largest base on the East Coast.”
Allegiant’s Orlando service operates not from the Orlando International Airport served by most major U.S. carriers, but rather from the Orlando Sanford International Airport that’s emerged as a hub for discount airline service in central Florida. Sanford sits about 30 miles northeast of central Orlando. It’s also only about 45 miles from Florida’s Atlantic Coast destinations like Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral.
“There’s a lot of current service (from Puerto Rico) to Orlando International,” Johnson says. “But there’s no service out east toward Sanford where we’re based. It makes a lot of sense to do that.”
Allegiant actually won't be first; tiny outfit National Airlines does run a limited schedule between Orlando Sanford and San Juan. But Allegiant will become the only big airline to fly the route.
Elsewhere, Allegiant also announced two new routes from Las Vegas, the carrier’s main base and home to its headquarters.
Five weekly Oakland flights begin Oct. 5 while twice-weekly Kansas City service launches Oct. 20.
Scroll down to see details on all of the new routes included in Allegiant’s Thursday announcement:
Trenton (TTN)
Orlando Sanford: Three weekly flights begin Nov. 3. The year-round service will be operated with Airbus A320 aircraft.
Punta Gorda: Two weekly flights begin Nov. 3. The year-round service will be operated with Airbus A320 aircraft.
St. Petersburg: Two weekly flights begin Nov. 4. The year-round service will be operated with Airbus A320 aircraft.
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Orland Sanford: Four weekly flights begin Dec. 14. The year-round service will be operated with a mix of MD-80 and Airbus A320 aircraft.
Las Vegas
Oakland: Five weekly flights begin Oct. 5. The year-round service will be operated with a mix of MD-80 and Airbus A319 aircraft.
Kansas City: Two weekly flights begin Oct. 20. The year-round service will be operated with MD-80 aircraft.
Existing routes
Kansas City-St. Petersburg: Increases to three weekly flights, up from two
Akron/Canton-Punta Gorda: Increases to three weekly flights, up from two
Akron/Canton-St. Petersburg: Increases to three weekly flights, up from two