5 Comments Add your own

• 1. ANCJason  |  July 19th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

  I never understood why they didn’t sell cruises from their website. It seems to me that it would be the primary reason to service Fort Lauderdale in the first place when you already have two other niche destinations in Florida (one of which is marketed as Daytona Beach and Orlando/Mickey Mouse). That, coupled with the fact that Spirit, AirTran and JetBlue are crawling all over FLL made it a mystery to me. Somewhat of a congested airport, as well.

  I just don’t think that Fort Lauderdale is a market for Allegiant. It’s either cruise ship passengers, which I didn’t see Allegiant catering to, or college kids who are only going to go their once a year in March.

  Your thoughts?

• 2. ANCJason  |  July 19th, 2008 at 8:48 pm

  Southern Skyways to Fort Myers….maybe Punta Gorda?

  What’s your take on the Viva Aerobus II thing?

• 3. rfdbusinessman  |  July 20th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

  Spirit always seemed better suited for FLL than Allegiant anyway. While I think that FLL can work from RFD, it seemed that more people had interest in Ft Myers.

  The newspapers in Northwest Indiana had a couple of articles last week about Gary airport and their efforts to get a customs station, funding, etc. From reading these articles, it sure looks less and less likely that they will be ready by Sept. Could that open the door for VivaAerobus to RFD ? I believe there are two other (maybe more) low cost Mexican air carriers who could at some point be interested in service from airports in the US to Mexico. Interjet and Volaris are the two who come to mind right now. I always found it tough to believe that Gary could be ready with customs, funding, etc in the short period of time being reported. Meanwhile RFD has everything ready to go.

• 4. Thomas V. Bona  |  July 21st, 2008 at 11:39 am

  Jason,

  Yeah, all around it seems like a missed opportunity for Allegiant. I heard from someone that their schedule just didn’t mix well with the cruise schedules, so they couldn’t take advantage of that opportunity. At the same time, FLL just never had the time to grow the market like it did its first three destinations. Even successes like LAS and SFB might not have happened had they been started in this environment.

  True, FLL isn’t quite as much a fit as other cities, but it might be the best option for southern Florida for them. My sense is that FLL is a bigger deal for east coasters than midwesterners, who for some reason go to Ft Myers.

  I see Southern Skyways to Ft Myers announced by the end of the year, unless the airport is losing tons on its current ventures. It just makes too much sense not to try for at least a season. Obviously, if oil prices stabilize or even keep dropping, it could help…

• 5. Thomas V. Bona  |  July 21st, 2008 at 11:51 am

  Rfdbusinessman (and Jason),

  I’m looking into vivaAerobus, I think they’d make a lot of sense here … especially if there could be some kind of easy bus or other link from Chicagoland to RFD for the passengers.

  I too doubted GYY could get ready in time for an international operation … and RFD would be a good start for any Mexican airline. Even if vivaAerobus isn’t it, there are many other options as you noted. The question is whether fuel has had as big a deterring effect on them as domestic airlines.

Leave a Comment

Name Required

Email Required, hidden

Url

Comment

Security Code:

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed