Avelo Airlines Only Has Two Flights on Tuesdays This Summer
While the majority of other U.S. airlines operate a relatively stable number of flights each day, Avelo Airlines’ business model challenges this, and it’s set to become more prominent this summer.
Avelo, which commenced operations just over three years ago, has scheduled approximately 200 round-trip flights per week, spanning 52 destinations and around 70 nonstop routes. This summer, Avelo is significantly pulling down the number of flights it will run on Tuesdays. In the industry, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are traditionally the weakest days for demand, especially for leisure travel.
Among the 200 round-trip flights, only TWO will operate on Tuesdays: one flight between Burbank (BUR) and Pasco, Washington (PSC) along with another flight between Burbank and Salem, Oregon (SLE).
I went through Avelo’s schedule and counted the number of flights it had each day. I used the week of July 14, 2024, but the weeks before and after have a similar schedule.
This summer, Avelo will only operate 1% of its total weekly flights on Tuesdays with just two round-trips. Last summer, Avelo ran a handful of flights on Tuesdays, such as New Haven (HVN) to Orlando (MCO), Fort Lauderdale (FLL), Raleigh/Durham (RDU), the now-discontinued RDU-FLL/TPA flights, and a few other routes.
This is a clear and simple strategy that works efficiently with Avelo’s business model. They only operate used Boeing 737s which are older and cheaper, so they have the ability to be flexible and optimize peak-day flying. This model and day-of-week change in capacity is very similar to Allegiant Air’s strategy, though Allegiant typically has a slightly higher proportion of Tuesday flying.
Other airlines, including Frontier and Southwest, have discussed reducing flying on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to better align with demand. However, they do not dramatically pull down flying to the scope of Avelo or Allegiant.
This also likely means Avelo will almost completely park its fleet of 16 aircraft on Tuesdays, unless it intends to operate charters on these days.