Allegiant Drops Toledo to Fla. Panhandle Service, But will Boost Two Other Toledo Routes

While Allegiant Air has established a strong Toledo station for travel to central and southwest Florida, its second attempt to start up a local route to someplace else has met the same fate as the first: cancellation after one summer.

Between June and August Allegiant ran planes between Toledo Express Airport and Destin/Fort Walton Beach in the Florida Panhandle. But during that two-month stretch, planes were only about 70 percent full. Now the deep-discount airline has dropped the route.

It’s the second straight miss in Toledo for Allegiant, which in 2016 started up a summertime Toledo route to Myrtle Beach, S.C., but also pulled that plug after its initial season.

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Next summer, however, Allegiant is adding a third flight per week between Toledo and both Sanford and St. Petersburg, Fla., so its overall level of service in Toledo will be the same next summer as it was in 2019, said Joe Rotterdam, manager of airport operations and airline affairs for the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority.

“They’re still very strong to the core Florida markets that they serve” from Toledo, Mr. Rotterdam said.

Destin, he said, was “a trial that just didn’t work,” while the Myrtle Beach route had struggled to compete in a saturated market that included low-fare flights on Spirit Airlines out of Detroit.

In a statement, Allegiant said the company is “constantly measuring demand and adjusting schedules when necessary.

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“When we try something, such as the Toledo-Destin route, and it doesn’t meet our expectations, we’re able to quickly shift our priorities to better serve customers’ needs,” the company said. “Providing affordable service to leisure travelers when they need it, and where they need it, allows us to keep our fares low.”

Between the first flight June 7 and the last Aug. 12, 5,141 passengers flew between Toledo and Destin on Allegiant, filling 69.1 percent of the 7,440 available seats on the twice-weekly route, according to statistics compiled by the port authority.

While the load factor improved from 62.7 percent in June to 72.7 percent in July and 72.2 percent during early August, it wasn’t enough to satisfy the airline, Mr. Rotterdam said.

“They’re a very nimble carrier. They don’t spend a lot of time waiting for routes to mature,” he said. “... They like to see higher load-factor numbers, and that didn’t materialize.”

Through August, Allegiant’s load factors on its other Toledo routes during 2019 ranged from 84.1 percent for Sanford, Fla. (near Orlando), 85.9 percent for Punta Gorda, Fla. (near Fort Myers), and nearly 90 percent for St. Petersburg, according to the port authority. The weakest month for any of those routes was 79.6 percent of seats sold to or from Sanford in April.

Allegiant traditionally has flown two round-trips per week between Toledo and central Florida destinations except during peak tourist and holiday travel periods. But for June and July, 2020, a third flight will be offered on the Sanford and St. Petersburg routes, Mr. Rotterdam said, with the Sanford service flying on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while St. Petersburg flights will be on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

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