Allegiant Air hopes for major growth but plans to offload Florida hotel

Allegiant Air says it is going “again to its roots” in 2025 with new jets, new routes and extra to return this yr.

A part of that evolution means the potential finish of its foray into the lodge enterprise.

This week, the corporate introduced it’s searching for buyers or consumers for its Las Vegas-style Sunseeker Resort close to Punta Gorda, Florida — a sprawling property on Charlotte Harbor the corporate as soon as noticed as a vacation spot for passengers it might funnel by means of its intensive route community into Punta Gorda Airport (PGD), a few half-hour north of Fort Myers.

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However early struggles for the resort since opening its doorways in late 2023 — and a re-focusing by Allegiant on its core airline enterprise — might see the airline’s lodge enterprise find yourself a short-lived gamble.

“Underlying our execution is the deliberate efforts of being laser-focused on our core energy: the airline,” Allegiant CEO Greg Anderson, who assumed his submit final summer season, stated this week on the corporate’s newest earnings name.

A whopping 44 new routes announced in a November announcement — tied for the most important growth in its historical past — will launch within the coming months.

And that could be only the start.

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For years, a labor scarcity and plane supply delays at Boeing hindered Allegiant’s hopes to develop its route map — a community lengthy identified for flights that join underserved U.S. cities with standard leisure locations.

However after many months of slashing routes and ready on the jets it might have to enter a real development spurt, the corporate hit a serious tipping level late final yr.

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“Plenty of that is within the rearview,” Allegiant chief business officer Drew Wells declared at an trade convention in November.

Over the ultimate few months of 2024, the carrier took delivery of the primary 4 of its long-awaited Boeing MAX 8-200 plane — the 190-seat jet it sees as a linchpin of its future plans.

Allegiant is scheduled to take supply of as much as 13 extra MAX jets over the course of 2025, a spokesperson advised TPG.

With staffing and different infrastructure already in place to assist a bigger airline, Wells stated, the addition of recent plane was akin to flipping a lightweight change — and the proof is within the numbers.

In October, Allegiant flew lower than it did the prior yr, in line with aviation analytics firim Cirium. The identical was true for November.

However in December, its complete variety of seats flown skyrocketed, 14% over 2023 ranges.

December wasn’t an anomaly. Over the primary six months of 2025, the airline’s complete seats flown is scheduled to be up 16% over this time final yr, per Cirium.

What’s extra, jets that includes the service’s extra-legroom “Allegiant Further” seats fly on 5 instances as many departures throughout the first quarter of 2025 versus the primary three months of final yr, the corporate shared this week.

Meaning the service might be higher positioned to seize the sturdy curiosity vacationers have in premium seats with further area — a development that is led a slew of low-cost airways to announce new higher-end seating and product choices in latest months.

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Further routes anticipated

After which there’s the matter of the place Allegiant flies: Count on the corporate to announce extra new routes in 2025, Wells advised analysts this week.

“The planning crew is ecstatic to have some flexibility and freedom,” he stated whereas touting the handfuls of recent flights the service will launch over the subsequent few months.

That features the half dozen cities that can quickly be linked by Allegiant to Gulf Shores Worldwide Airport (GUF) on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, the place it would quickly grow to be the one airline at that coastal airport.

“We have heard from our clients that they journey to the Alabama coast for an annual trip, however presently drive as a lot as 15 hours every approach,” Wells stated this week. “This seems lots like prior Allegiant success tales like Punta Gorda, or Destin, Florida.”

Much like Gulf Shores, Punta Gorda had little significant business airline service when Allegiant started flying there in 2009. The airline leveraged its place there for a torrid expansion, at this time flying to about 50 locations from the secondary airport within the Fort Myers metro space.

Just one different airline, Solar Nation Airways, flies from the airport, providing seasonal service to its Minneapolis hub in a route it added solely as a part of an apparent turf war with Allegiant.

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Regardless, Punta Gorda is the place Allegiant will once more have a big presence in 2025, with dozens of nonstop routes however, it hopes, no lodge enterprise within the close to future.

The corporate hopes to dump the Sunseeker property by summer season, executives stated Tuesday — and have fielded curiosity each from potential consumers and firms behind the most important lodge loyalty applications.

Suffice it to say, 2025 might be a yr of main evolution for the airline.

“I do not view it a lot as change, as coming again to our roots,” Wells stated in November whereas talking on the Skift Aviation Discussion board in Dallas. “Sort of returning that focus to what made us nice is the place we wish to go.”

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