Allegiant Air will make Oakland its newest focus city, announcing today that will add seven new nonstop routes from the airport.
Allegiant’s new nonstop routes from Oakland will be: Billings, Mont. (begins April 26); Bozeman, Mont. (April 27); Kalispell, Mont. (April 27); Idaho Falls, Idaho (April 27); Medford, Ore. (April 26); Missoula, Mont. (April 27); and Redmond, Ore.
Allegiant will fly two flights a week to each of those destinations, though company officials say frequencies –and possibly new destinations – could be added if demand is strong.
PHOTO GALLERY: An early morning tour of Oakland International Airport
Allegiant president Andrew Levy tells Today in the Sky that Oakland “has been in our sights for a few years now, and it’s finally the right time … to start to expand our footprint there.”
“It’s a market that obviously has a lot of appeal to leisure travelers, everything that the Bay Area offers to travelers,” Levy adds. “We feel confident it’s going to work and work very well for these new markets. And I think there’s more growth beyond these first couple (routes). They way we approach that is to start small and grow slowly – make sure everything we’re doing works – and go from there.”
For now, today’s additions will give Allegiant a total of 10 nonstop destinations from Oakland, which it has been serving since 2009. That’s when it began flying between Oakland and both Bellingham, Wash., Eugene, Ore.
ARCHIVES: Allegiant to try Oakland-Eugene route (April 17, 2009)
“Those two markets have performed very, very well … which gave us a confidence that there was an opportunity in Oakland,” Levy says.
And, just this past Wednesday, Allegiant launched service between Oakland and Phoenix-Mesa, flying six flights a week on the route. That’s an unusually robust schedule for Allegiant, which tends to offer a more leisure-focused schedule of 2 to 4 flights a week on the majority of its routes.
As for Oakland, airport officials hope the move will be a boon for both the airport and for local tourism.
Though Allegiant does sell flights-only airline tickets, the focus of its business is on selling overall “packages” that bundle airfares along with items like hotel rooms, rental cars and excursions.
Given that focus, Allegiant’s Oakland routes will focus on vacation travelers who hoping to see Bay Area sights ranging from the attractions of San Francisco to the wine country of Napa Valley.
If Allegiant’s bet on making Oakland a focus city works, it would bring in tens of thousands of visitors to the region.
“We’ve always thought that the Bay Area would be an attractive destination market for a lot of the small cities we (already) serve,” Levy says. “Our business really is about bringing people from small cities to places they want to travel. It’s a leisure focus.”
Allegiant’s other primary focus destinations are Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Phoenix-Mesa and St. Petersburg (Fla.). Allegiant operates smaller focus cities at Punta Gorda (Fla.), Myrtle Beach (seasonally focused) and Bellingham (Wash.), though the latter skews more toward Canadians crossing the border to fly from there to warm-weather destinations.