Three years ago, an Allegiant Air representative visited Vero Beach to explore the possibility of joining Elite Airways as a commercial carrier at the city’s regional airport.
Last week, Allegiant announced it was adding Melbourne to its rapidly expanding route map, starting in November, offering non-stop passenger jet service – twice per week at one-way fares as low as $39 – to and from Pittsburgh, Nashville and Concord, North Carolina.
The move effectively kills any realistic chance the Las Vegas-based budget airline will come to Vero Beach.
“I don’t see that happening anytime soon,” Vero Beach Regional Airport Director Todd Scher said in the wake of Allegiant’s expansion into a region where the airline already offers service at the Orlando/Sanford and West Palm Beach airports.
“We haven’t heard anything from Allegiant recently, and now that they’re in Melbourne, I’d be surprised if they were still interested in coming here,” he added. “In fairness, though, we haven’t reached out to them, either.”
Actually, Scher hasn’t reached out to any airlines since he succeeded Eric Menger, the city’s longtime airport director who retired last summer.
The reason?
City leaders have decided that adding another commercial carrier doesn’t make sense, financially and in terms of demand from the community.
“That doesn’t mean we’re not open to talking to an airline interested in coming here,” Scher said. “If Allegiant or any other carrier came to us, we’d definitely welcome the conversation. We’re not opposed to adding another airline.
“We’re just not actively seeking out another airline.”
Given the economic consequences of luring another commercial carrier to Vero Beach – the expense of expanding the terminal and an all-but-certain cut in annual state funding for airport improvements – it seems a wise decision.
At least for the foreseeable future.
Remember: The Florida Department of Transportation notified the city in December 2019 that the airport will be reclassified from “general aviation” to “commercial” if it boarded more than 10,000 passengers in one year.
Elite, which began flying into and out of Vero Beach in December 2015, surpassed that threshold for the first time in 2018, when more than 11,000 passengers boarded its flights, primarily to Newark, New Jersey, with seasonal service to Portland, Maine, and Asheville, North Carolina.
City officials responded to FDOT’s notice by requesting and receiving a waiver that expires in 2023. They also have joined the state’s other smaller airports in lobbying legislators to restructure the agency’s classifications, which they say hinder their ability to attract commercial carriers.
If that doesn’t happen, though – and Elite boards more than 10,000 passengers in a year after 2023 – Vero Beach would lose as much as $1 million annually in FDOT grant revenue for airport projects included in the city’s five-year plan.
That’s because the state usually covers 80 percent of the cost for large projects at “general aviation” airports, while the city would be responsible for 20 percent. As a “commercial” airport, the split would be 50-50.
“We’re trying to get the Legislature to help,” City Manager Monte Falls said, adding that the airport would need Elite to reach 200,000 boardings to generate enough revenue for the city to offset the grant-funding shortfall.
Unless Elite massively expands its Vero Beach route map – the Maine-based concierge airline has given no indication it plans to do so – the only way the airport could get to that number would be to add another commercial carrier.
And city officials don’t seem eager to do so.
Nor should they be.
As Falls put it: “I don’t have people beating down my door asking for additional airline service.”
Besides, the potential loss of state funds would be compounded by the costs of expanding the city airport’s terminal and other facilities to accommodate a second airline – especially a carrier that uses larger aircraft and transports more passengers.
“Our building can accommodate about 75 passengers, which works for Elite, but we don’t have the facilities to handle a 130- or 150-passenger aircraft,” Scher said. “It’s not just the passengers; it’s all the people who take them to the airport or who are waiting to pick them up when they arrive.
“You could have 200 to 300 people in the terminal,” he continued. “If an airline like Allegiant wanted to come here, we’d need to expand not only the terminal, but probably our parking area and our staffing. And we’d have to come up with the money to pay for that.
“But it’s difficult to get the funding until you have a commitment from an airline, and the airlines usually want incentives, like free rent for a year,” he added. “There are a lot of obstacles for an airport of our size trying to bring in a bigger airline.”
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic – and before the city decided to cease its pursuit of additional airlines – Menger engaged with as many as five that expressed at least a passing interest in coming to Vero Beach.
Allegiant was among them.
“Their guy was pretty aggressive with a timeline on when they (Allegiant) wanted to start here,” said Scher, who was Menger’s assistant director at the time. “But then Eric went to a conference somewhere and met someone else from Allegiant, and he wasn’t as eager.
“I don’t think we heard from them again.”
That’s OK.
Scher and Falls both said they’re “happy” with Elite’s service here, though they’d welcome flights to more destinations – especially a return to Asheville, North Carolina, which was a popular route before the pandemic shut down airline operations.
Elite didn’t fly between Vero Beach and Asheville last summer, and company President John Pearsall said last week the airline hadn’t yet decided if it will do so this summer.
“We’re still looking at it,” he said.
With nothing on Elite’s schedule this deep into July – and with the airline moving its Vero Beach flights to Melbourne in September to allow the airport here to resurface its longest runway – it seems unlikely we’ll see Vero-Asheville service this summer.
But let’s hope Asheville is back on Elite’s Vero Beach route map next year, along with another destination or two, perhaps somewhere in the Midwest or in the Baltimore-Washington area.
“We’re proceeding as if the current airline is the only one we’re going to have here,” Scher said. “So, for right now, the only expansion of commercial service here would involve Elite adding routes, and we’d love to see it.
“But, again, if another airline is interested in coming here, we’re open to the possibility.”