CLEVELAND, Ohio – Exactly how cheap are Cleveland travelers?
We’re about to find out.
Starting Wednesday, the nation’s three largest ultra-low-cost airlines will compete head-to-head at Cleveland Hopkins, the only mid-size airport in the United States where they’ll fly to so many overlapping destinations.
Industry experts expect the competition to stimulate demand and drive down airfares in Cleveland even more.
Newest to the competition is Allegiant Air, the Las Vegas-based carrier that is leaving the Akron-Canton Airport after less than two years and moving to Cleveland Hopkins. Its first flight from Cleveland is Wednesday.
Eventually, the carrier will serve 11 nonstop destinations from Cleveland, competing against Spirit Airlines or Frontier Airlines (or both) on at least seven of those routes.
Critics of these bare-bones carriers say you get what you pay for: no in-flight entertainment, no peanuts and seats that don’t recline. Even worse, they say, when weather or mechanical problems lead to delays and cancellations, passengers are sometimes stranded for days.
Credit the dismantling of the United Airlines hub in 2014 for all this intense interest in Cleveland. Since United shuttered its hub, Hopkins has seen major expansions from several airlines, including Frontier, Spirit and JetBlue.
Allegiant, founded in 1997, is different from most other carriers, even other low-cost airlines.
Cleveland’s ultra-low cost carriers
COMPARING PRICES
We picked a random week – the week of March 13 – and looked for the cheapest one-way fare available from Cleveland to four destinations on three competing airlines. We found some rock-bottom prices:
Fort Myers/Punta Gorda
Allegiant: $49
Frontier: $51
Spirit: $49.19
Orlando/Orlando Sanford
Allegiant: $41
Frontier: $39
Spirit: $38.19
Phoenix/Phoenix-Mesa
Allegiant: $67
Frontier: $99
Fort Lauderdale
Allegiant: $42
Spirit: $39.99
COMPARING ON-TIME ARRIVALS
Allegiant
Percentage on time: 69 percent
Average delay: 79 minutes
Frontier
Percentage on time: 71 percent
Average delay: 67 minutes
Spirit
Percentage on time: 75 percent
Average delay: 64 minutes
Source: FlightStats; figures for January 2017
Here’s what you need to know about Cleveland’s newest carrier:
Leisure destinations only
Allegiant targets the leisure travel market exclusively, primarily north to south. From Cleveland, the airline will fly to six cities in Florida, plus Phoenix, New Orleans, Austin, Myrtle Beach and Savannah/Hilton Head.
Many times, Allegiant flies into smaller, alternative airports (including Orlando Sanford, Punta Gorda and Phoenix-Mesa). Elsewhere, they fly into big, international airports, as in Austin, New Orleans and Fort Lauderdale.
In addition to focusing only on leisure destinations, the airline also flies only on the most popular travel days. To New Orleans, for example, the carrier is flying Fridays and Mondays only, hoping to capitalize on weekend travelers.
Allegiant is beginning with twice-weekly flights on all of its Cleveland routes, except Orlando Sanford (three times a week), Punta Gorda (three times a week) and St. Pete-Clearwater (four times a week).
Fees, fees, and more fees
Like its low-cost cousins, Allegiant entices travelers with super-low base fares that buy you a seat only. Most travelers need more: A checked bag is $20, a carry-on is $15 – but only if you pay for it when you buy your ticket. Otherwise, it’s $45 or $50 (one-way).
The price for an advanced seat assignment varies by flight, but starts at $10. And yes, of course, you’ll pay for your Coke and chips.
Allegiant also continues to charge an $8 fee to use a credit card to buy a ticket.
The company also makes a big chunk of revenue from travelers who buy hotel rooms, rental cars and other vacation amenities on its site.
Reliability and safety concerns
Allegiant also saves money by flying older, used airplanes. Its fleet of 85 planes is the oldest among major U.S. carriers, with an average age of 22 years.
When these older planes break down – and they do – it can create havoc for an airline that only flies to a destination two or three times a week. The Internet has an abundance of stories from unhappy Allegiant passengers, who have missed half of their vacation (or can’t get home) because of flight delays and cancellations, caused by mechanical or weather issues.
A bigger problem, according to the Tampa Bay Times, is whether the airline’s planes are safe. The newspaper in November published the results of a major analysis of Federal Aviation Administration records, which concluded that Allegiant planes are four times as likely to fail during flight as those operated by other major U.S. airlines.
The paper studied 65,000 records from 2015, and found that the average U.S. airline had about three unexpected landings caused by mechanical problems for every 10,000 flights. Allegiant had 12.
The FAA last year cited Allegiant for a series of minor procedural infractions and required the airline to file a plan to address the findings, which it did last fall.
In response to the newspaper’s findings, Allegiant CEO Maurice Gallagher Jr. acknowledged that the airline needed to make some changes. “I don’t disagree with the thrust of your numbers,” he said in an interview with Times reporters. “We want to be well-known as being reliable and on time, and obviously safe, and that’s an important part of our brand. And we’re going to make sure we do those things. But if you stub your toe, step up and own it and move on.”
The airline is in the midst of phasing out its oldest airplanes, MD-80s that have been flying for nearly three decades. Last July, the carrier made its first-ever order for new airplanes, contracting with Airbus for 12 new A320s.
Where they fly AllegiantFrontierSpirit Austin Atlanta Atlanta Destin, Fla. Cancun Boston Fort Lauderdale Charlotte Dallas Jacksonville Denver Fort Lauderdale Myrtle Beach Fort Myers Fort Myers New Orleans Houston Las Vegas Orlando Sanford Las Vegas Los Angeles Phoenix-Mesa Los Angeles Myrtle Beach Punta Gorda Minneapolis-St. Paul New Orleans Savannah/Hilton Head Orlando Orlando St. Pete-Clearwater Phoenix Tampa Portland Raleigh-Durham San Diego San Francisco Seattle Tampa Source: the airlines; note that not all routes have started and many are seasonal
Cleveland’s debut
At least initially, Cleveland’s new routes will be flown with a combination of MD-80s and Airbus 319s and 320s (to check which planes are used on which routes, see seatguru.com).
The carrier kicks off its service in Cleveland with a Wednesday afternoon flight to St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport.
On Thursday, flights begin to Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Punta Gorda and Savannah/Hilton Head. And Friday: Austin, New Orleans and Phoenix.
Flights to Myrtle Beach start in April and to Destin, Florida, in May.
With those 11 destinations, Hopkins will have more Allegiant destinations than any northern city except Cincinnati.
Allegiant spokeswoman Krysta Levy said the airline has been pleased with ticket sales so far. “Northeast Ohio has always been an important area for Allegiant, and we’re excited that we get to serve even more travelers with more new service for the area.”
In addition to its short history at Akron-Canton, Allegiant also flies to several destinations from the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
Cleveland’s launch, however, marks a major expansion by the carrier – in a region that already has several low-cost carriers battling for customers. Tom Reich, an aviation consultant based in Washington, said he thinks Cleveland can support the additional capacity.
“The pie is large enough,” said Reich, director of air service development at AvPORTS, an airport management company. “Allegiant is coming to Cleveland because they see there’s still a vacuum. If they thought the market was already saturated, they wouldn’t come in.”
Todd Payne, chief of marketing and air service development at Hopkins, said Allegiant’s aim is to actually grow the pie – by enticing more people to travel.
“Air fares are going to continue to drop, for sure,” he said. “This is a new test for their industry. Let’s see how they do.”
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