Avelo Airlines to end flights to Melbourne. What about Daytona? We've got answers.

DAYTONA BEACH ― Avelo Airlines is permanently ending service to Melbourne and one of its nonstop routes to Sarasota. It will also temporarily suspend its twice-weekly nonstop Daytona Beach-Wilmington, Delaware flights for two months in early 2024.

How does this affect Daytona Beach?

The ultra low-cost carrier began offering twice-a-week nonstop flights in late June on two new routes: Daytona Beach-New Haven, Connecticut, and Daytona Beach-Wilmington. Avelo bills its flights to Wilmington as "Philadelphia/Wilmington" because the Delaware city is just a 30-minute drive to the City of Brotherly Love.

Courtney Goff, a spokeswoman for Avelo, on Friday confirmed plans to temporarily suspend service on its Daytona Beach-Wilmington route, but said the twice-a-week nonstop flights on its Daytona Beach-New Haven, Connecticut route "is not affected and will proceed as usual. It actually has a few extra dates added."

Joanne Magley, director of marketing and customer experience for Daytona Beach International Airport, said Avelo will continue offering two incoming and two outgoing flights a week on its Daytona Beach-Wilmington route through Jan. 5.

Before then, Avelo will actually add a third weekly incoming and outgoing flight on that route on Dec. 20 and 27 as well as Jan. 3.

Avelo will resume its twice-a-week nonstop Daytona Beach-Wilmington service on March 8, said Magley, who added that flights on that route are on Mondays and Fridays.

Why the temporary suspension of service?

"The Daytona Beach (DAB) to Philadelphia/Wilmington, DE (ILG) is going on a small suspension from Jan. 6 through March 6," Goff wrote in an email to The Daytona Beach News-Journal. "This route is on a break due to scheduled heavy maintenance on our planes in ILG due to the delayed arrival of our new aircraft.

"As the Q1 timeframe typically does have lower demand in these markets, we chose to utilize this time to lessen frequencies and seasonally exit so our planes are in a good position for peak spring/summer travel," Goff wrote. "This helps us have even better reliability and creates a better experience for our customers."

Magley said Avelo officials have informed officials at Daytona Beach International Airport that the airline is considering the possibility of bringing back Daytona Beach-Wilmington nonstop flights for the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18.

Speedweeks, which runs from Feb. 14-18 and culminates with the running of the Daytona 500, typically draws hundreds of thousands of NASCAR race fans to Daytona Beach.

Has Avelo used economic incentive funds from Volusia?

Both Daytona Beach and Melbourne airports offered economic incentives in their bids to convince Avelo to give them a try earlier this year.

Daytona airport's incentives included a $1 million "revenue guarantee," meaning Avelo could tap into that fund to cover operating costs if it failed to make minimum revenue goals from ticket sales in its first two years.

The airport also agreed to waive landing, terminal and ground-handling fees for Avelo's first two years here as it does for all airlines new to Daytona.

And it seems as if the airline has already dipped into those funds.

"They did tap into that minimum revenue guarantee fund, but we don't know how much. We do know that we still have a good chunk of that fund," said Cyrus Callum, Volusia County's director of aviation and economic resources, which includes Daytona airport.

Callum who had Friday off for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend said he did not know the exact amount that Avelo tapped from the revenue guarantee fund.

If Avelo exits Daytona Beach before the two years are up, they don't owe the incentive money back, Callum acknowledged. "It's just the cost of doing business," he said.

Daytona airport still makes money from having Avelo here, he said. "We've already benefitted from $2.4 million in positive economic impacts," he said of Avelo and the air travelers it brings to Daytona Beach. "Those benefits come in the form of payrolls, hotel stays, car rentals, restaurant patronage (etc.). Our (airport) concession revenues have gone through the roof as well as our parking revenues."

Melbourne airport's economic incentives came in the form of waived landing, terminal and ground-handling fees for Avelo's first two years, as well as pledges by the airport authority board and Space Coast Office of Tourism to spend a combined total of $275,000 to promote its service.

Sarasota offered an economic incentive package similar to Melbourne's, confirmed Goff. "It is very typical for airports to offer incentives on unserved routes," said wrote in an email.

But event with incentives, it took Avelo only one month to decide to immediately suspend service on two of the three nonstop service routes it planned to launch in late June at Melbourne Orlando International Airport: its Melbourne-Raleigh/Durham and Melbourne-Wilmington flights.

Avelo flights on its Melbourne-Raleigh/Durham route only filled 30% of the available seats in July while advance ticket sales for the planned Melbourne-Wilmington route were so low that service was never actually launched.

"The way incentives work is that the airport holds the money and spends in conjunction with the airline's marketing and any operational needs," wrote Goff in an email on Friday. "The airline does not take money upfront, so the airport/community will keep any unused incentives.

"Incentives are involved in entering new cities where the communities might be unfamiliar with new carriers, or if they haven't had new air service in a while. We never enter a market or start a new route only relying on incentives."

So why did they pull out of Melbourne?

Goff confirmed plans to permanently end service to Melbourne Orlando International Airport effective Saturday, Jan. 6. It will end its Sarasota-Raleigh/Durham service on Sunday, Jan. 7.

Avelo, however, will retain its Sarasota-New Haven and Sarasota-Wilmington routes, she added.

"Unfortunately, MLB (Melbourne airport) has not generated the demand we expected and has been underperforming in future bookings. This was not the outcome we envisioned when Avelo took flight at MLB in June," Goff wrote. "All customers who have tickets booked past January 6 have been notified about this news with their options for a refund or to re-accommodate to flights from Daytona Beach (DAB) or Orlando International (MCO)."

Avelo is also eliminating its New Haven, Connecticut-Melbourne and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina to Sarasota nonstop service as well as its Las Vegas-Arata, California and Las Vegas-Dubuque, Iowa routes.

The reason? "Demand did not generate as hoped," according to a Nov. 21 news report published by FlightGlobal.com, an airline industry trade publication.

What other routes are being 'seasonally suspended'?

According to FlightGlobal, the other Avelo routes that will be temporarily suspended in the first quarter of 2024 besides Daytona Beach-Wilmington are Burbank, California-Colorado Springs, Colorado; Burbank-Brownsville, Texas; Las Vegas-Brownsville; New Haven-Greenville, North Carolina; New Haven-Savannah, Georgia; New Haven-Charleston, South Carolina; and Wilmington-Nashville, Tennessee; and Wilmington-Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

What's Daytona's long-term outlook for Avelo?

Daytona airport officials remain hopeful that Avelo will not only continue offering twice-weekly nonstop service on its Daytona Beach-Wilmington and Daytona Beach-New Haven routes, but could eventually add service to more destinations.

"Remember, they're only going to pause for service to Wilmington for two months and that's because those airplanes (737-700s and 737-800s) are mandated by the FAA to undergo heavy maintenance and only because they didn't get their new planes delivered in time," said Callum. "And their decision to pull out entirely from Melbourne could create an opportunity to increase in Daytona. We see this as a positive thing."

Magley added, "They (Avelo) have said their load factors (the percentage of available seats filled) have been great for Daytona Beach. They are still making observations regarding what routes do well. How we continue to do here will affect their decision on whether to add more destinations. We are still positive about the future for Avelo (at Daytona Beach airport)."

Since launching its service to Daytona Beach in late June, Avelo has seen its passenger numbers grow here jump from 1,830 that first month to 5,600 in July, followed by 5,014 in August, 4,178 in September and 4,690 in October, according to data provided by the airport. The average percentage of available seats filled has been 83%.

Daytona airport on pace for best year since 2018

According to data provided by the airport, passenger traffic at Daytona Beach continues to steadily improve from the all-time low hit in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic caused air travel globally to plummet.

After only counting 332,835 incoming and outgoing air travelers in 2020 on all airline flights here, including Delta Air Lines and American Airlines, Daytona airport has seen its overall passenger traffic numbers rise to 576,637 in 2021 and 586,118 in 2022.

Through October this year, the airport has already counted 606,599 passengers, a 20.7% increase over the 492,437 in the first 10 months of last year. If that rate of increase holds steady in November and December, Daytona Beach could be on pace to have a total of 719,672 passengers, the most since the 763,412 counted in 2018.

The all-time record annual total for Daytona Beach International Airport was set in 1997 when passenger traffic topped 1 million.

Other airlines adding more flights here

Daytona airport recently got good news when American Airlines, which offers daily multiple flights to and from its hub airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, announced plans in the New Year to add twice-weekly nonstop flights to and from Washington, D.C. The new nonstop seasonal service will begin Feb. 17 and run through May 5.

The flights will depart Daytona on Saturdays and Sundays at 11:53 a.m. and arrive in D.C. at 1:59 p.m.

American introduced nonstop D.C. flights in the spring of 2022 and resumed the seasonal flights for Saturdays in December 2022 and spring 2023.

American also offers nonstop service on a seasonal basis to Philadelphia as well as to Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas.

Delta, which offers multiple daily flights to and from its hub airport in Atlanta, Georgia, also recently announced plans to add "special event direct flights" here to and from LaGuardia Airport in New York City and to and from Detroit, Michigan for the week of the Daytona 500 in 2024. Both flights will operate Feb. 16 and 19.

Delta will also offer a fifth daily flight here to and from Atlanta on Feb. 19.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Avelo Airlines to end flights to Melbourne. What about Daytona Beach?