Las Vegas Sun NewsAllegiant says safety first
Tower staffing cited as reason for airline leaving Northern Colorado market
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1 October 2012
1:55 a.m.
Richard N. Velotta
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Residents of Northern Colorado have been scratching their heads over Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air’s decision to end service to Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport this month.
It turns out that a safety issue was behind the decision.
Airline officials informed the city’s leaders in a conference call in August that they were pulling the plug on year-old nonstop flights between Fort Collins and Mesa, Ariz., and that on Oct. 29, it would end service to and from Las Vegas, a route that has been in place for nine years.
Allegiant is known for making quick decisions on routes that don’t sell as well as airline executives expected. The company once announced a route between Las Vegas and Louisiana and canceled it before the first flight took off because advanced sales didn’t meet expectations.
But the Fort Collins flights were different.
Allegiant normally operates one or two flights a week between resort cities and small-town destinations. Fort Collins has had five round trips a week to Las Vegas, and planes frequently run close to full — good indications that the route was popular and profitable.
Allegiant’s only explanation to Fort Collins was that the cancelation was a business decision, meaning that it could likely make more money using planes on other routes.
Fort Collins officials say Allegiant’s pull-out will cost the city $1 million annually. They are now scrambling to find another commercial airline to replace Allegiant, which had the only scheduled service there.
The airport received a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration for runway improvements largely to accommodate Allegiant, and this year, the airport received an award from the FAA for its safety enhancements.
So why the sudden cancellation?
Some residents of Fort Collins and Loveland theorize that Allegiant had better opportunities elsewhere because locals had become savvy travelers and weren’t buying enough Allegiant add-ons, such as hotel rooms and car rentals, through the airline’s site.
Allegiant CEO Maury Gallagher told me last week that the plug was pulled because of a growing safety concern.
Some of the airports Allegiant frequents are small enough that they don’t have a staffed tower. Jets operate in uncontrolled airspace. Gallagher said the skies around Fort Collins are filled with enough general aviation aircraft that it became a problem.
“The returns there were reasonable, but you have no tower there, and there are lots of small airplanes flying around, and you don’t know where they’re at,” Gallagher said. “It’s a delicate issue, and we appreciate that it has been a great market for us over the years. We like the market, but we made a business decision, hard one as it is, that this is better for the traveling public and for Allegiant.”
If the community wants the airline to return, it’s up to leaders to get their congressional delegation involved in staffing an air traffic control tower to alleviate Allegiant’s concerns.
Maybe that will quiet some of the airline’s critics who believe every decision is driven by revenue.
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Gallagher is a proven liar and Allegiant is a scam airline. Hope thye both go down the tubes.
It's the "bottom line" nothing more......
It is ridiculous to claim that there's any safety issue with the Fort Collins-Loveland (FNL) airport, due to lack of a tower. There are some 15,000 airports in the US, approximately 5,000 are open to the public, and only 10% (approximately 500) have towers. Of the 76 airports in Colorado, only a couple of handfuls have towers: Denver International, Front Range, Rocky Mountain Metro (Jeffco), Centennial (Arapaho County), Colorado Springs, and Pueblo on the Front Range, and Aspen, Grand Junction, and Eagle on the Western Slope.
To require FNL to have a tower just for Allegiant would be a lot like requiring Miami to have snow removal equipment. Maybe that's a little extreme, but not far off. If Allegiant would simply follow the existing rules and advice found in the Airman's Information Manual, just like the nearly 300 other operators of other aircraft using FNL must do each and every day, there would be no safety issues. But Allegiant pilots have become famous for ignoring the existing pattern usage and not listening to the radio before calling in from 20 miles out, asserting that they will land the direction they want to, regardless of wind or existing pattern direction.
I was in the pattern at FNL when Allegiant called in, when it was pretty active with half a dozen airplanes, all announcing where they were and what they were doing--in this case, landing on 15 (southward). Allegiant announced that it was 20 miles south, for a straight in to 33 (northward), and the pilot asked "any other traffic in the area, please advise." I couldn't resist and responded in my best dictatorial voice, "Allegiant calling in, be advised that there are at least 6 other airplanes in the pattern for 15, all of them announcing where they are. Suggest you get in line with everyone else and set up to land on 15." That's what he did, but had I not sounded like air traffic control and ignored him like everyone else did, what would he have done? Guaranteed, he would have busted into the pattern going the opposite direction to everyone else, and everyone else would have had to give way and adjust their patterns accordingly.
The only safety issues have been caused by Allegiant, not by the existing traffic or the absence of a tower. All of us who regularly use FNL (and all of the other non-towered airports in the area) know and generally follow the rules--Allegiant is no different, just because they're a bit bigger and faster than most of us. The rules are there for everyone to follow, not just those who choose to follow them. Instead of dropping FNL as a destination, Allegiant should require their pilots to strictly follow the existing rules, and there would be no safety issues.