Airliners.net

Allegiant is now saying that they will begin scheduled international flights in 2018.

Here are some snapshots from the article:

Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air now expects to begin international flights in 2018, with initial destinations likely including those in Mexico or the Caribbean, says the carrier's senior vice-president of planning Lukas Johnson.

He discussed Allegiant's broader network plan, saying the airline has identified a "couple hundred" routes on which it could launch service.

Johnson also dismissed talk that the carrier could seek to launch longer-distance flights across the Atlantic Ocean.
"We debate it, but we are not going to do it," he says of transatlantic service.

Here is the full article: http://dashboard.flightglobal.com/app/# ... newsstream

Here are some of my picks:
PIT-CUN
PIT-PUJ
CVG-CUN
CVG-PUJ
CVG-PVR
LAS-CUN
LAS-PVR
LAS-SJD

Big destinations I see are CUN, PUJ, MBJ, AUA, SJD, PVR, NAS

AZA has CBP but only at the FBO so doubt we will see international flights added there.

I'd imagine G4 will want to add winter-seasonal weekly international service to a lot of their smaller cities where appropriate customs facilities exist. If cities as small as 25,000-100,000 in Canada can support a weekly or more winter sun route, surely U.S. cities of 200,000-500,000 can do the same.

I imagine there are no plans for G4 to change in terms of their Canada offerings (i.e. crossing to catch a flight in a border town)?

Dominion301 wrote:

If cities as small as 25,000-100,000 in Canada can support a weekly or more winter sun route, surely U.S. cities of 200,000-500,000 can do the same.

The difference is that:

A) All Canadian cities experience a harsh winter. This is not true in the US.
B) Because of A), in Canada you must leave the country if you want to go somewhere warm in the winter. This is not true in the US.

I certainly see MEM-CUN as a possibility

Big question is when will Mexico become a per-clearance country? If they do it, it will bring a ton of additional US money to Mexico, there are a ton of current Allegiant cities that don't have customs that would support service to cities such as Cancun.

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/11/04/dhs ... -following
The attached states that MEX could get per-clearance soon but that isn't a typical Allegiant destination.

joeljack wrote:

Big question is when will Mexico become a per-clearance country? If they do it, it will bring a ton of additional US money to Mexico, there are a ton of current Allegiant cities that don't have customs that would support service to cities such as Cancun.

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/11/04/dhs ... -following
The attached states that MEX could get per-clearance soon but that isn't a typical Allegiant destination.

I'm sure they would only fly from cities that have customs at the airport: LAS, CVG, PIT, LAX, SFB, EWR, PIE, etc. I have a feeling they are going to start lay-overs. It's going to be difficult to succeed internationally without allowing people to fly their without living in a large city.

Initial routes would most certainly be ones they already fly for Apple Vacations such as PIT/CVG-CUN/PUJ. This would simply allow them to sell unused seats on existing flights. Frontier did (or still does) the same thing.

SBN-CUN is one of the routes targeted as we have our CBP facilities ready to be opened. Several years ago Allegiant approached SBN officials about starting service to CUN. As a sidebar over 50,000 people within a 300 mi radius of SBN annually travel to CUN.

dabpit wrote:

AZA has CBP but only at the FBO so doubt we will see international flights added there.

Gateway just added Westjet flights so there is international flights to Gateway already. Im not sure though how they do the customs though.

Kenneth Armijo

monsoon84 wrote:

Gateway just added Westjet flights so there is international flights to Gateway already. Im not sure though how they do the customs though.

Kenneth Armijo

They're precleared in Canada. US airports receiving precleared flights still need to have CBP available, but not necessarily an FIS facility. CBP is present on the airfield at AZA, but they have no way to process international passengers on a regular basis due to the lack of proper facilities. Until AZA constructs an FIS (which is probably unlikely until they can afford to fund their permanent terminal project, which I would hazard a guess at being in the $500mil range at a minimum), they will be unable to host international flights not normally precleared, which is essentially limited to Canada as is applicable to AZA.

It's actually a pretty good idea. They can serve 2-3w flights that no one else wants to demand heavy places like CUN SJD and NAS. Using Mexican crew would probably lower their costs too if they did that...

Allegiant's original plan for Mexico had nothing to do with secondary cities in the U.S., it was all LAS:

"Allegiant has applied for route designation to San Jose del Cabo & Hermosillo Mexico, from Las Vegas.
Carrier says it intends to commence year-round service in both markets by June 2014 utilizing 166 seat MD-80 aircraft.
OST-2013-0128"

Hermosillo might suggest G4 was looking to link secondary markets in Mexico with LAS.

I think it will be a combination of both - the only way that the LAS station will grow is Internationally.

But there's also opportunities from Northern places that have crew bases for sun traffic to Mexico and the Caribbean, particularly PIT and CVG.

dabpit wrote:

AZA has CBP but only at the FBO so doubt we will see international flights added there.

AZA is all in on Allegiant though. I have a feeling if G4 came to the airport and said they wanted to open an international route that necessitated CBP facilities, AZA would find a way to make it happen.

monsoon84 wrote:

Gateway just added Westjet flights so there is international flights to Gateway already. Im not sure though how they do the customs though.

Edmonton has US CBP preclearance, so it's effectively a domestic flight when it arrives at AZA, for ICE purposes.

Polot wrote:

Dominion301 wrote:

If cities as small as 25,000-100,000 in Canada can support a weekly or more winter sun route, surely U.S. cities of 200,000-500,000 can do the same.

The difference is that:

A) All Canadian cities experience a harsh winter. This is not true in the US.
B) Because of A), in Canada you must leave the country if you want to go somewhere warm in the winter. This is not true in the US.

Which is exactly why I basically listed a population range of approx. 5 times that of the Canadian counterpart for the US city. True about the US having warmer climes even in winter, but still there's a good 1/2 of the US that is still in the 'escape winter' zone.

ahj2000 wrote:

It's actually a pretty good idea. They can serve 2-3w flights that no one else wants to demand heavy places like CUN SJD and NAS. Using Mexican crew would probably lower their costs too if they did that...

They won't use a Mexican based flight crew. It would cost too much to send them all to LAS or SFB for training. They will just use a third party in Mexican markets for ticket and gate agents, baggage handling, etc. They already do that now in some smaller US markets.

Since they want to go Internationally, does that mean they will do a terminal change in LAS to the international terminal, T3? Or would it just be for those flights?

I assume they will do smaller airports routes, like:

LAS-CUU
LAS-TIJ
LAS-TLC
LAS-CUL
LAS-BJX

I don't think they will do CUN as F9, NK, and WN all fly to it, but G4 would be the first to fly from LAS. I feel like they will do much better in Canada than in Mexico, only because they already have their name in Canada as a border airline.

I imagine that the International arrivals into LAS would just go into one of the E-gates, disengorge, and then be towed off to one of their storage pads or A.

I think you will see a lot of smaller markets to Mexican vacation destinations 1-2 times per week, provided they have a customs facility. Could see FAT-SJD, TUS-SJD, ONT-SJD, and a few airports out East to CUN.

A few years ago Allegiant was letting some smaller airports know there was a potential for international flights if the airports added FIS. The costs and regulatory process were such that most of the airports decided they would not attempt to build the facilities. But some airports still consider Allegiant international service a possibility which is one reason why places like SCK are pursuing customs services.

In the past Allegiant has also said it was studying making a customs stop at airports like SFB, LAS, etc on the return flight to allow international service from smaller cities. I don't know what they ever concluded about the extra costs, etc associated with making a customs stop.

2018 is when the first Airbus series aircraft are scheduled to start being based in LAS, so the timeline fits the story. G4 has never really been a connecting type of airline, however I could see the possibility of doing redeye turns to Mexico, leaving LAS late in the evening and returning early in the morning to offer passengers connections to smaller destinations. Only issue is, if passengers miss connect, they could have to wait days until the next G4 flight, depending on the day of the week!

Allegiant has done red-eyes in the past but I think connections are very unlikely.