After announcing a ‘wine-country-to-wine-country’ flight earlier this year, the Texas-based carrier now intends to focus on the East Coast.
Avelo Airlines, the Texas-based commercial carrier that’s drawn backlash for its work ferrying deportees from the country for the Trump administration, announced this week it will leave Oregon as well as California, Washington and Montana due to financial pressure.
Service from Salem will end next month, and from Redmond, Eugene and Medford, in early December, the Oregonian reported.
In a statement, Avelo CEO Andrew Levy wrote that operating out of its West Coast base at the Hollywood Burbank Airport “will not deliver adequate financial returns in a highly competitive backdrop.” The company will instead shift its focus to the East Coast.
“There is rarely one singular reason why decisions like this are made,” Levy wrote.
In May, the budget airline doubled down on the Beaver State, rolling out a regular wine-country-to-wine-country flight from the Willamette Valley to Sonoma County. One-way tickets from Salem Municipal Airport to the Charles M. Schultz Airport outside Santa Rosa cost $76. The route was announced as part of a larger reorganization and the closure of Avelo’s base of operations at the Las Vegas Reid International Airport.
Around the same time, Avelo triggered backlash for signing an agreement with the Trump administration to assist with deportation flights from Arizona.
Avelo CEO Andrew Levy said at the time the contract was “too valuable not to pursue” and it would aid the airline’s long-term expansion and protect jobs, the Associated Press reported. The move prompted Connecticut’s attorney general to warn the carrier it risked losing tax incentives and other state support, according to ProPublica.
Avelo’s decision also sparked a nationwide opposition campaign, the Coalition to Stop Avelo. With a slogan “Boycott Evil. Boycott Avelo,” the group has protested at airports — including in Salem — and pressured investors, to pressure the airline cease its assistance of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division.
The coalition has taken credit for Avelo’s recent struggles. A company spokeswoman told The Oregonian the decision to withdraw from the West Coast has nothing to do with protests related to the ICE contract. “Despite the investment of significant time, resources, and efforts, our West Coast operations have not produced the results necessary to continue our presence there,” they wrote.
It’s the latest in a line of corporate reinventions for the Houston airline that began life in the 1980s as a casino charter carrier. In 2021, Levy — a former United Airlines executive — announced the company would transition to an “ultra low-cost carrier” that would offer better and more reliable service than other low-cost options like Spirit, Frontier and Allegiant.
So-called ULCCs often focus on providing no-frills flights from midsize cities to leisure destinations like Las Vegas and Orlando, according to Aviation Week.
Avelo was the only commercial carrier operating out of the Salem airport, aka McNary Field, running routes to Las Vegas and L.A.-Burbank. When it started serving Salem, it was the first commercial carrier to operate there in 14 years. But the wine-country venture doesn’t appear to have panned out.
Earlier this year, Avelo maintained a fleet of 16 Boeing 737s flying out of 52 locations, most second-tier airports. The airline intended to lease an additional five 737s this year.
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