Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

With over 1,000 daily passengers to Las Vegas and only three flights per day, despite the fact they concentrate on smaller markets and what not, I wonder if Allegiant could make a go of service to Indianapolis.

Allegiant makes most of its money and gets most of its business through vacation package sales, and wouldn't even have to offer daily service, maybe four times a week, or even twice, just whatever it takes as long as their package buyers are buying and are happy.

Going up against three daily flights on Northwest and Southwest wouldn't be too much of a struggle for them. They go up against four daily flights...two 737's from Southwest and two 757's from American going in and out of the St. Louis market with a daily LAS passenger local traffic of just over 700 passengers.

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

I still can't believe NW is running a single A319 on that route. Or that FL hasn't started the route yet. There are 1186 people daily. NW could run two 753's on that route daily and fill them up. Personally I think it would be best for the route if someone like NW added seats instead of a 3rd carrier coming in and killing yields on what has now become a good route. Remember back in the ATA days? I flew in the L1011 out there and it was packed full both ways. Fares were cheap too. ATA really drove down prices on that route. Since they left IND-LAS the prices have gone up quite a bit.

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

Then maybe ATA just needs to come back! Duh! ;p

As far as I know, every Southwest and AA flight that leaves St. Louis goes out packed to the brims. And the fares are even higher than those from Indianapolis.

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

AA dedicates a 757 solely on the STL - LAS route. It flies LAS - STL - LAS - STL - LAS every day.

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

All we have for 1186 passengers is two 737's and one A319.

Member

Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 248
Location: Lexington ky

i doubt Allegiant would come to indy i think ata would come back before Allegiant came now i could see Allegiant going to evv fwa and gyy sbn already has flights out of sbn

Member

Joined: 15 May 2006
Posts: 728
Location: West Lafayette, IN

I don't think they'll come to IND, they usually serve small markets like, as Paintrain said, SBN.

Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

Agreed. Allegiant's business model diesn't include cities like Indy. I can totally see EVV to Orlando/Sanford a couple times a week, though.

Then again, SBN might not work out for Allegiant. For a short drive, people can go to MDW or IND or TOL or GRR and get good fares into MCO, rather than going to Sanford, and many more choices of times, etc. I'll be interested to see if they can make a go of it in SBN.

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

I mentioned it once and I'll mention it again. Allegiant serves St. Louis twice a week in a market where there are 700 daily passengers with two 737's and two 757's flying out of there daily. The Allegiant service into Belleville has been quite popular on a Sunday/Thursday package selling format.

With three flights and over 1,100 passengers daily, I am sure they could get a hold into the market with something similar.

Member

Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 248
Location: Lexington ky

only way i see them coming if the new metro airport could have passenger traffic like that airport in columbus OH or st louis that one across the river

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

Costs out of Indianapolis are low enough to meet their "needs". They could easily hire out the ground handling to another airline and not have to deal with staffing or hiring personnel at the airport. I doubt US Airways, Southwest, or Northwest would be willing to be hired out, so that might be their only potential problem.

AirTran Reporter

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 341
Location: Indianapolis

What is going on with this meeting that we were going to have????

Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

I think the main issue for Allegiant at Indy is its competitive position. We have nonstop flights to MCO on NW, WN, and FL, totalling 585 daily seats. These are typically priced around $150 to $200 round trip. While this only represents around half the average demand, what do you think these three airlines would do if Allegiant came in? They'd probably double capacity and slash fares. And keep in mind that Allegiant flies to Sanford, not MCO. SFB is 35 miles from MCO, then another 25 miles to Disneyworld. So Allegiant comes in to Indy, the other airlines respond as they will, and now IND pax would be able to fly nonstop to MCO for probably $100 to $120 roundtrip. They're closer to Disney and all the hotels and resorts, and they'd probably have their choice of 10 flights per day rather than the 5 they have now. Why would anyone fly Allegiant for the same price (because you know WN, FL, and NW would match).

LAS might have a little more wiggle room for Allegiant. There's one NW flight and 2 WN flights, totalling 408 seats - roughly a third of the average daily demand of 1186, as we've discussed. But I think you can expect the same compeititve response from WN and NW if Allegiant came in with Vegas flights. If NW adds an A319 and WN doubles their flights to 4 737s, there's still room for a couple more 737s on the route. But you can't underestimate the competitive response from the incumbent airlines. They will ramp up capacity and slash fares to protect their margins.

And besides, the deal with Allegiant is to fly from secondary and tertiary airports that are underserved. IND isn't one of those airports. If we had a second airport, maybe Allegiant would fly from there. I could envision them serving Lafayette, EVV, and maybe a place like CMI (Champaign, IL). But not IND. The big airlines have basically ignored Allegiant so long as they're flying from dinky little airports.

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

Northwest tried going up against Allegiant in Green Bay, Lansing, Fargo, Rapid City, Des Moines, etc. Northwest came in with daily service additions. Allegiant stuck to their "travel package" base and infrequent service throughout the week.

Allegiant won. Northwest is ending those services coming up soon.

In the case of Southwest, I think Southwest for the most part, leaves Allegiant alone. And if they are smart, they should. What Allegiant enables is for a new market of passengers to be able to travel to Las Vegas. What happens with this is a stair step....if you have more people coming to Las Vegas, then what comes out of it is a promotion of Las Vegas travel. With Southwest positioning Las Vegas as one of its if not its top cities of operation, then you're bringing more people to the city which just promotes travel on that airline.

An example of this --
Bill up in Rapid City, SD wants to take a trip somewhere. Allegiant serves there, Las Vegas is cheap. So Bill and the wife and the friends down the street pack up and go and fly Allegiant. But since Las Vegas is so much fun, why not invite friends and family, too. They all happen to live in Little Rock and wow, how convenient it is to be able to fly there on Southwest.

You get the idea...



I like Allegiant and I like what they are doing, but at some point and time the novelty of going to Las Vegas all the time from some rather small places...such as Rapid City, etc., is going to wear off. When and if this happens, some larger markets that could support package service where there is a lack in service, compared to the demand, needs to be explored. Indianapolis is an example of the point I'm trying to get at.

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

I should also note that Champion Airlines also serves St. Louis to Las Vegas against two weekly from Allegiant, two from Southwest and two from American. Champion services between two and four flights weekly selling the packages and individual seats.

Member

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 142
Location: IND

PIA had (not sure if they still do) Allegiant service. People would drive from all over Illinois to take that flight.

Usually the airports are hungry for this type of service and make pretty sweet deals with landing fees for Allegiant....something IND will not do. Do not expect Allegiant to come to IND.

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

Indianapolis' airport fees already fit within a structure that would work for the Allegiant system. The only "thing" that would make these fees be higher is if they leased their own gate in the C Concourse. I fully suspect such a service , if it was to ever begin, would have ground services outsourced out to one of the other airlines.

The structure also works for Champion Air, which is like Allegiant, but smaller. They focus on Las Vegas and a couple of other leisure markets selling packages and what not to make their money. They are largely owned in part by Northwest Airlines. In some retrospect, it is surprising they have not brought Champion into Indianapolis to put their leisure vacation package buyers onto Champion and to sell the seats on Northwest to higher paying business passengers.

Here is the Champion route map.

http://www.championair.com/plan.html

Peoria still has Allegiant service. A little bit about Peoria -- Peoria is one of their most profitable stations as far as the Las Vegas service is concerned. It was one of the first stations to go seven days a week (yes, service on Tuesdays, which was traditionally their day off) from May through November of this year. The service cuts back Saturdays in December and for parts of January, which are traditionally slow for all the airlines.

They've marketed themselves well and have quite a following from throughout Illinois and even draw people from Missouri and Iowa in to fly out on their flights. I myself have even driven the 2 hours from St. Louis when I have gone to Las Vegas, saving myself almost $175 - $225 than flying out of St. Louis. Allegiant does fly from Rockford which draws a lot from southern Wisconsin and Chicagoland but I doubt they'll offer service from other Illinois airports in the near future since Peoria has done so well.

At one time they did fly from Peoria into Orlando but dropped the service because of Delta and Airtran fighting it out from Bloomington - Normal. I guess that was one dog fight they did not want to get into, but it is interesting they are now going to go at it from Stewart/Newburgh and some other cities into Orlando against AirTran *AND* JetBlue. Peoria is one of the cities that they will serve from St. Petersburg offering two daily flights beginning in December. I'd like to see them succeed on this route and perhaps at some point and time even bring back Peoria into Orlando, which is probably far off.

Peoria is also one of their three stations where flight crews overnight. The flight from Las Vegas leaves at 420pm and arrives Peoria around 10pm with the next day departure at 845am and arrival into Las Vegas around 1030a, or somewhat close to those times. If you ask me, these times have pretty much helped Allegiant bring these flights in and out of Peoria packed to the brim. They do such business that is rare for an Allegiant employee in Peoria to be able to non rev out to Las Vegas on their own airline. One of the employees there was telling me she had to drive up to Chicago and fly out on Frontier to take a trip out to Las Vegas.

Member

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 142
Location: IND

I believe Champion doesn't have scheduled flights like Allegiant. I think you are a bit confused with how Champion works.

Allegiant sells tickets for their flights...Champion is a charter airline - meaning they are hired by travel companies that put packages together (In Champion's case, MLT Vacations...a company partly owned by NWA).

Champion flies the Pacers...you will see one of their 727s at Signature pretty much all season.

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

i know how Champion Airlines works. and Champion sells individual seats on their flights. just like Allegiant does. depending on the time of the year they offer scheduled flights twice weekly, three times weekly, or four times weekly.

how ironic that in December they offer the same days of service as Allegiant out of Mid America Airport/St. Louis. how ironic the prices of individual seats are the same.

http://www.worryfreevacations....anged=false&isModify=false

Member

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 142
Location: IND

The link did not work....

Could it be possible that MLT is selling seats on allegiant - OR - (not as likely) Allegiant will be using Champion to fly this route?