Summer already looks brighter at RFD

January 2nd, 2009 at 02:11pm Thomas V. Bona

Allegiant Air just released its schedule through July, and there’s good news for Chicago Rockford International Airport. While it’ll mostly remain behind 2008 levels in departures through the spring, things pick up dramatically in the summer. Allegiant is scheduled to have three to five more flights a week more for most of June and July. That’s simply because fuel prices are so much lower (last year, Allegiant slashed its departures out of Rockford when fuel prices were particularly high). If the economy wasn’t in the toilet, you might see Allegiant expand even further.

Here are the details:

Sanford/Orlando, Fla. - 2-3x weekly in January and early February; 5-6x weekly from mid-February  through mid-April (cept for an 8x week during spring break); back down to3x weekly through May; then 5-6x weekly most of the summer.

Las Vegas - 2x weekly through mid-March, then 3-4x weekly until mid-April; back down to 2x weekly in late April and all of May; 3-4x weekly most of the summer.

St. Petersburg/Clearwater, Fla. - 2x weekly until mid-February;3-4x weekly until mid-March; 5-6x weekly the rest of March; 4x weekly in early April; back down to 2-3x weekly the rest of the schedule

Phoenix/Mesa, Ariz. - 2x weekly until mid-February; 3-4x weekly until mid-April; 2x weekly the rest of the schedule (except a 1x week in late April). This is one of the bigger improvements - we lost Mesa service in July, August and September last year.

In terms of overall departures out of RFD, the airport will remain below 2008’s levels until July, barring service additions. But from then on, it should top 2008’s levels. That means traffic will likely be up for 2009 (especially if Allegiant keeps achieving its ridiculously high load factors) but probably won’t threaten the all-time record unless there are some big service announcements. But Bob O’Brien has said 2009 could be a record year, so we’ll see what he has up his sleeve….

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