New airline to offer $19 tickets to Burbank
Beginning in May, Humboldt County residents will be able to fly to Hollywood for only $19. The Humboldt County Aviation Department and Fly Humboldt announced the partnership with the brand new airline, Avelo Airlines, on Thursday morning.
Avelo will offer flights from the Humboldt County Airport in Mckinleyville to the Hollywood Burbank Airport four times a week on a single-class 189-seat Boeing 737-800 aircraft beginning May 19, 2021.
“We’re super excited about our announcement this morning with the Avelo airlines,” county aviation director Cody Roggatz told the Times-standard on Thursday morning. “It’s a partnership that we’ve been establishing over the last couple of months. We’re really looking forward to this new service and it’s a new type of service on a new type of aircraft that we’ve never had at ACV airport before, I think it’ll be great for the community.”
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Roggatz said the airline industry has made an effort to bring people to new locations where they can safely enjoy outdoor activities.
“Obviously, we have an abundance of opportunities for people to do just that with our redwood forests and our beautiful coastline,” he said. “Before February or March of last year, we had never heard of the social distance concept, now it’s become part of our everyday vernacular. The airline really sees this as an opportunity for people to safely travel to our region and enjoy the outdoor activities that we offer.”
Gregg Foster, executive director of the Redwood
Region Economic Development Commission and sponsor of Fly Humboldt, said Avelo will facilitate greater connectivity from Humboldt County to the western United States.
“What’s particularly gratifying for us is if you look at what their strategy and what they’re promoting, they’re not talking about flying from elsewhere to the Hollywood Burbank Airport but they’re really talking about connecting to these great destinations from Southern California,” Foster told the Times-standard on Thursday morning. “It’s a little bit different than what we’ve had before where airlines are talking about flying from the Arcata-eureka airport to somewhere, they’re talking about bringing people here.”
“It’s good for the community and it’s good for the tourism industry,” Foster added.
Though the $19 tickets are temporary to promote the brand new airline, Foster said tickets will still be affordable in the future.
“They are offering cheap tickets for two reasons, one of which is to boost the service itself but also they’re introducing their airline to the public,” he said. “No one has heard of Avelo until today, so they want to introduce the flying public to their airline. In the long term, prices will go up, but they still are a low-cost carrier. It’s very much one of those menu-type airlines where you can add all the different things you want and your ticket price goes up accordingly, but it’ll still be very affordable.”
According to a press statement from Avelo, a one-way ticket starts at $19 and goes up from there.
• First Checked Bag: $10
• Carry-on Overhead Bag: $35
• Priority Boarding: $10
• Pet in the Cabin: $95
• Seating Options: Customers may choose from several seating options. Avelo’s 189-seat 737-800 aircraft will offer 129 standard slimline 29-inch pitch seats. Reserved window and aisle seating starts at $5. Avelo aircraft will also feature 60 seats with 31 to 38 inches of pitch. These seats start at $18.
“Avelo has a simple purpose — to Inspire Travel,” said Avelo founder, chairman and CEO Andrew Levy in a prepared statement. “People are ready to reconnect with family and friends and explore new places. Avelo is a different and better kind of airline, built from scratch to offer an affordable, convenient and caring travel experience.”
The Avelo leadership team boasts “more than 200 years of collective aviation experience,” which includes former senior executives of Allegiant Air, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Jetblue Airways, Northwest Airlines and Spirit Airlines.
Foster noted that the 189seat Boeing 737-800 will be the largest plane the Humboldt County airport has seen in years.
“It’s theoretically possible that we will have more seat capacity at the airport here than we’ve ever had in our history,” Foster said. “That’s great, it just means we’ll be capturing a lot more of the public and the pricing will be good. We’ll have three airlines so there will be some competition and they’re all great airlines.”
Leading up to this news, Roggatz said airport staff has worked over the months to accommodate and store larger planes.
“Our little airport team here has been working diligently over the last couple months trying to set up for this growth, not just with Avelo but with American Airlines as well,” Roggatz said. “Our airport that has been vastly underutilized because of COVID over the past year, we imagine it will be hustling and bustling here throughout the summertime, which we’re very much looking forward to.”
The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a devastating blow to the entire aviation industry over the last year. Before the pandemic, Roggatz said the Humboldt County airport was doing great.
“We were right at or near-record pace. If the year had finished out the way January and February started, we were going to check records in a positive way. Unfortunately, with COVID, we set records in a negative way,” Roggatz said. “At a local level, in 2020 we were down 54% from 2019, which is obviously a very drastic downturn. As folks are getting vaccinated and continuing to honor social distancing practices along with washing hands and masking up, working together we feel we try to get back to where we were and even beyond with these new services.”
More information on the new partnership can be found at flyhumboldt.org or aveloair.com.