Allegiant links small-town America

velotta@lasvegassun.com

Monday, Oct. 24, 2005 | 7:44 a.m.

By Richard N. Velotta Las Vegas Sun

SANFORD, Fla. -- There's an eerie quiet at Orlando Sanford International Airport on this warm and humid Wednesday morning.

There's not a single international arrival on the day's schedule.

TransMeridian Airlines, one of the airport's tenants, ceased operations a week earlier, so all of its offices are shut down.

There's not a passenger in sight. Seems that just about everybody in the state has their eyes glued to CNN and The Weather Channel. The locals aren't exactly screaming "Yabba dabba doo" for the arrival of Wilma by the end of the week.

And then there's Allegiant Air, the Las Vegas-based company that put down roots at Sanford earlier this year. Allegiant has a few employees taking care of its daily responsibilities, but like the airline's Las Vegas operation, the middle of the week is slow.

"This place can go from a ghost town to 5,000 people really quick," said Keny Wilper, eastern regional director of Allegiant.

Wilper has seen it happen. The former Las Vegan now based in Orlando spends much of his time on the road developing new markets. He marvels at how business at the airport northeast of Orlando -- between the size of McCarran International and North Las Vegas airports -- can ramp up so rapidly.

The airport has 12 gates and the capacity to handle nine international flights at once. As a result, Sanford has positioned itself to accommodate jumbo jets from Great Britain filled with charter passengers clamoring to see Orlando's theme park attractions.

In 2004 Sanford served 1.8 million passengers with nearly 58 percent of them from overseas.

Allegiant Chief Executive Maurice Gallagher, a former Florida resident, was quite familiar with Sanford and kept it in the back of his mind as his airline began picking up steam in Las Vegas, shuttling passengers from second-tier cities such as Sioux Falls, S.D., nonstop into McCarran.

Earlier this year, Allegiant announced plans to duplicate its successful Las Vegas model -- built on low fares and package deals with a number of hotel partners -- in Orlando, and Sanford became the obvious choice for the operation.

Sanford was a military base in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam era and was home to fighters, light-attack aircraft and reconnaissance planes throughout its history. In 1969 it became Sanford Municipal Airport and in 2001, took the name Orlando Sanford International.

While international charter arrivals are the airport's staple, executives are looking to build its domestic product, and Allegiant's decision to set up at Sanford was embraced by airport officials.

"When we saw their (Allegiant's) track record, we were very excited for them to be here," said Michael Caires, marketing and public relations manager of the airport. "Once they got here, they saw the potential and stepped up their growth plans."

The airline started with flights linking Orlando with Des Moines, Iowa; Peoria, Ill.; and Lansing, Mich., cities that have supported Allegiant's Las Vegas flights.

Over the next four months, Allegiant's Orlando operation will hit high gear. Later this week, the airline will begin flights to Newburg, N.Y., and Portsmouth, N.H. Beginning in November, the startup calendar is full: Nov. 9, to Sioux Falls, S.D.; Nov. 16, South Bend, Ind.; Dec. 7, McAllen, Texas, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Dec. 15, Toledo, Ohio; Dec. 16, Allentown, Pa.; Dec. 22, Worcester, Mass.; and Feb. 1, Belleville, Ill.'s MidAmerica St. Louis Airport.

"That's about all the capacity we'll have with our existing fleet," said Tyri Squyres, a spokeswoman for the airline. "But Orlando has already been really good for us."

The vast majority of Allegiant's traffic comes from small-town America. But Las Vegas and Orlando residents are starting to take notice of the airline's low fares and using it for their own travel.

Squyres said 9.5 percent of Allegiant's Las Vegas passenger counts originate in Las Vegas. Through August, the airline served 526,673 passengers at McCarran, making it the ninth-busiest at the local airport and on par with popular low-cost carrier JetBlue Airways.

But Orlando has embraced the airline even more: 16.1 percent of the airline's Orlando counts originate there.

And all of it has been accomplished with no advertising in Las Vegas or Orlando.

"It's all word of mouth," Squyres said. "People in Des Moines will tell their families in Las Vegas and Orlando about us."

Squyres said airline executives theorize that the higher percentage of originating traffic in Orlando is a result of a different demographic in Florida. There are more "snowbirds," part-time residents who winter in the Orlando area, and who visit family and friends in places in or near where Allegiant flies.

Airline expert Mike Boyd of Evergreen, Colo.-based Boyd Group doesn't categorize Allegiant as a low-cost carrier, even though the airline's fares rival those offered by any discounter. Boyd calls it a "second-tier carrier" because it focuses on small markets.

That doesn't bother Allegiant, which says it is making money but doesn't disclose financial results.

Allegiant's Orlando operation now has about 100 employees, including pilots, flight attendants, maintenance personnel and a few administrators. By comparison, Allegiant has about 500 employees in Las Vegas.

The airline's ticket counters and gates are staffed with contracted laborers from Swissport International Ltd., a top ground provisioning company serving the airline industry.

On the Sanford Airport grounds, Allegiant has about 20,000 square feet for offices, warehousing, maintenance and a commissary to prepare food and beverages to load onto flights.

The airline has four ticket counters and a help desk to steer passengers with hotel packages to their resorts.

The airport is equipped with common-use technology similar to that of McCarran, making it easy to add counters and gates at a moment's notice. That same technology and some strategically positioned doors and hallways are what allow Sanford the ability to offload several jumbo jets from international destinations simultaneously, and then turn the majority of the operation into a domestic facility hours later.

Allegiant will base additional twin-engine MD-80 jets that seat 130 passengers as the Orlando schedule picks up in the months ahead. It has one spare jet dedicated to the Orlando operation and a surplus jet engine on hand as a fleet backup.

The airline currently has a fleet of 14 of the jets.

Allegiant officials expect the Orlando operation to pay off, especially since the company won't have to invest more in the 25 cities it currently serves.

"A large part of the attraction of Orlando is that it enables us to leverage our existing points of presence with the Allegiant brand we've established," said Ponder Harrison, managing director of the airline in Las Vegas.

"In our hearts, Las Vegas is always going to be No. 1," he said. "But Orlando is a very good counterbalance to an airline that focuses on the leisure market as we do."

Richard N. Velotta can be reached at (702) 259-4061 or at velotta@lasvegassun.com.