Allegiant: We can’t take credit for low leisure airport fares

July 23rd, 2008 at 03:12pm Thomas V. Bona

Last post, I surmised that Allegiant might have something to do with the low fares at places like Las Vegas and Fort Lauderdale.

You’ll forgive my lack of intelligent analysis, I’m still relatively new to covering airlines.

Allegiant spokeswoman Tyri Squyres quickly explained, and in retrospect I shoulda known this:

“Leisure markets always have the lowest yields, because it’s almost all discretionary travel. By contrast, big business markets have some of the highest fares.
FLL and LAS are, of course, among the biggest leisure markets in the country. This long pre-dates Allegiant’s presence as a significant factor in Las Vegas (and of course we’ve been present in FLL for only a relatively short time and with quite a modest schedule).
Las Vegas, in fact, has long been notorious for its low fares.
The flip side of this is that it’s exactly the leisure markets that are being slammed by airline capacity cuts, and that makes sense too. When an airline is looking to cut capacity, it will do so first in the markets where its most marginal markets, and for most traditional airlines, that’s the big leisure markets like Las Vegas, Orlando, Hawaii, etc.”

Thanks, Tyri.

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