End of Allegiant flights puts airport funding in jeopardy

Allegiant Airlines’s decision to halt its flights from the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport to Phoenix and Las Vegas puts the airport at risk of losing most of its federal funding.

The airport, whose sole carrier was Allegiant, could lose about 85 percent of its $1 million in annual funding from the Federal Aviation Administration, airport director Jason Licon said Tuesday.

Licon did not know why Allegiant pulled out.

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“They didn’t give us much information, unfortunately,” Licon said. “We’ve been trying to ascertain what exactly sparked this decision.”

The airline told Licon it plans to discontinue flights in October, though he did not know an exact date for the last Allegiant flight.

The move caught officials by surprise. They said they had been told by Allegiant that it was doing well in this market.

“The profitability was excellent out of Northern Colorado for them,” Licon said.

The number of passengers who had boarded planes at the airport increased 26 percent to nearly 45,000 last year from the year before. Allegiant passengers represented 95 percent of that total, Licon said.

Other traffic at the airport consists of private chartered flights.

Allegiant flights served mostly to shuttle vacation travelers, while Denver International Airport provides the most access to businesses, said Josh Birks, the city of Fort Collins’ economic health director.

“I don’t think it’s got a negative impact from that perspective,” he said. “I think the bigger impact is, and we’ll have to see how that works out, is just what it does to the ongoing funding for the airport from the FAA.”

If the airport does not find a new carrier after Allegiant leaves, it will receive only $150,000 instead of $1 million annually in federal Airport Improvement Program funding.

Allegiant informed Licon in a conference call Monday morning that it would stop service at the airport. The phone conversation followed a 2 a.m. email from the airline announcing the call, he said.

Licon asked the airline what he could do to persuade the airline to stay.

Allegiant, which began providing service at the airport nine years ago, had six weekly flights to Las Vegas and Phoenix. It already had planned to suspend its Phoenix flights in September.

The news came as Allegiant also suspending flights between Gary, Ind., and Orlando for six weeks.

The airline suspends flights at roughly half of its origination airports in order to remain profitable, airport officials in Gary told the Post-Tribune newspaper. It chose to suspend those flights at Gary because with summer ending and school starting, Allegiant saw there was exceptionally light booking.