Somedays, when I’m bored, I like to track random flights. I decided to track Allegiant Air’s Airbus A319s. When I look at their activity log, it seems like the only place they fly in and out from most of the time is Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, one of their focus cities. This is for both the A319s that are currently active.
Why is Allegiant only flying their A319s in and out of Phoenix? Do they plan on flying to operating to other focus cities as well?
flightaware.com/live/flight/N301NV
flightaware.com/live/flight/N302NV
It’s because all their pilots spend the night in their home base and since they only have 2 of the aircraft so far, they’ve kept all their A319 qualified pilots in Phoenix.
Every Allegiant aircraft is based in one of their “hubs” and all their trips begin and end in that hub. For routes that don’t touch one of their crew bases, for example FWA-MYR, the aircraft starts in a crew base and flies something like SFB-FWA-MYR-FWA-SFB. Or for EUG-PSP, the crew and aircraft would fly LAS-EUG-PSP-EUG-LAS.
Eventually as Allegiant gets more airbus aircraft they will be used out of their other crew bases, I believe LAS will be next (the added range/payload capability/efficiency of the Airbus over the MD-80 is more useful out west than in and out of Florida)
