Discount carrier Avelo Airlines announces nonstops to three more destinations from RDU

Richard Stradling
·2 min read
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Avelo, one of two start-up airlines that made their debuts at Raleigh-Durham International Airport within the last year, is adding new nonstop flights from the Triangle.

Avelo Airlines announced Wednesday that it will begin flying nonstop between RDU and Memphis, Rochester, New York, and Manchester, New Hampshire, in June.. Avelo becomes the only carrier at RDU to serve all three cities.

The flights will take place to each city two days a week. Memphis and Rochester begin June 14, and the first Manchester flight is a week later.

To help serve the new flights, Avelo said it will base a second Boeing 737 at RDU and hire 35 more local employees to support the two planes. The airline already has about 50 workers, including pilots, flight attendants, gate agents and aircraft technicians.

“We are very encouraged by the early momentum Avelo is experiencing here,” Andrew Levy, the airlines’ CEO, said in a prepared statement. “We’re just getting started and look forward to inspiring even more travel among our RDU customers.”

Avelo, which rhymes with yellow, arrived at RDU last spring with nonstop flights to Tweed-New Haven Airport in Connecticut, where the carrier got its start. This winter, it began offering nonstop service between RDU and six Florida cities. The flights announced Wednesday bring the number of destinations the airline serves from RDU to 10.

To keep up with its growth and to help ease crowding in RDU’s main terminal, Avelo moved to Terminal 1 last month, joining Southwest and Spirit.

Avelo and another low-cost carrier, Breeze Airways, both began flying in the spring of 2021, as the airline industry was struggling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Breeze made its first flights to three destinations from RDU last month and has announced plans to serve five more with nonstop flights by the end of May.

Avelo and Breeze join other discount airlines, such as Frontier, Spirit and Sun Country, that have helped expand nonstop options for Triangle travelers. With Avelo’s announcement, the 14 airlines doing business at RDU are now flying nonstop to 62 destinations, more than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two airlines aim to provide flights to markets that are under-served by other airlines. That means they’ll often be the only carrier with nonstop service to cities such as Hartford, Providence, Rhode Island and Fort Myers, Sarasota and other smaller airports in Florida.

Sometimes that exclusivity can be difficult to maintain. When Breeze announced nonstop flights to Louisville last month, it had that route to itself. Now American Airlines says it will also begin flying between RDU and Louisville in May.