Avelo Airlines is less than a week away from beginning its expanded service from the Wilmington Airport (ILG) near New Castle.
The budget airline is adding eight destinations. They will fly to each destination two or three times per week. The first of the new flights will take off Thursday.
- Charleston, South Carolina (CHS): Mondays and Fridays
- Daytona Beach, Florida (DAB): Mondays and Fridays
- Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina (GSP): Thursdays and Sundays
- Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (MYR): Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays
- Nashville, Tennessee (BNA): Thursdays and Sundays
- Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina (RDU): Thursdays and Sundays
- Savannah, Georgia/Hilton Head, South Carolina (SAV): Wednesdays and Saturdays
- Wilmington, North Carolina (ILM): Thursdays and Sundays
When Avelo announced the new destinations in April it also included twice-weekly flights to the Melbourne/Cocoa Beach Airport. Those flights have since been dropped. Avelo did not respond to a request for comment.
Avelo will also continue flying to the five Florida airports it launched service with in February: Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Tampa and West Palm Beach.
PREVIOUS REPORTING: We took the first flight on Avelo from New Castle Airport. Here’s what it was like.
Avelo has had a successful start restoring commercial airline service to the Wilmington Airport following Frontier Airlines’ exit last year. Bolstered by a strong marketing push, Avelo starting next week will have more destination options than Frontier ever had in its two stints of service at the airport.
Numbers provided by Avelo — the company in a press release said it flew more than 50,000 customers on more than 400 flights in its first 120 days of service from Delaware — put it on pace to serve more customers this year than Frontier did in any single year.
Bureau of Transportation Statistics data are only available through March. Avelo flights from Delaware were 88% full in the airline’s first two months of service. That was one indicator Delaware was ready for more flights, Avelo officials said in April.
The Wilmington Airport is one of Avelo’s four home bases. (Its other home bases are in Burbank, California; New Haven, Connecticut; and Orlando.) To support the new flights, Avelo is adding a second Boeing 737 at ILG.
Contact Brandon Holveck at bholveck@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @holveck_brandon.
