Avelo Airlines adding flights from MacArthur Airport to North Carolina, Florida

A Houston-based airline plans to begin offering discount flights to North Carolina and Florida in May from Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, Islip Town officials said Tuesday.

Avelo Airlines plans flights two days a week — Thursdays and Sundays — to Concord-Padgett Regional Airport in North Carolina starting May 22, Islip and Avelo officials said at a Long Island news conference. The airline will add Thursday and Sunday flights to Lakeland International Airport in Florida and Wilmington International Airport in North Carolina on June 12.

Avelo is the only airline offering direct flights between Islip and any of those three destinations, according to airline spokesman Jim Olson. The company’s business model emphasizes connecting smaller airports that are often near larger, busier travel hubs.

It will be the Islip-owned airport's fifth carrier, joining JetBlue, Frontier, Southwest and Breeze.

“It took five years to get them here,” Islip Supervisor Angie Carpenter told Newsday. “But little by little we’re growing. When I got here 10 years ago, we had one airline — now we have five.”

Avelo, formerly a charter service known as Casino Express or Xtra Airways, launched April 28, 2021, the town and airline said. It flies to dozens of U.S. cities, including Albany; New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut; as well as Cancun, Mexico; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, according to the company's website.

About 6.3 million customers have flown on nearly 50,000 flights since Avelo launched, the news release said.

At MacArthur, the company is offering introductory rates starting at $59 to Concord and Wilmington and $69 to Lakeland. Those trips have to be booked by Monday in order to be eligible for the special rates, Olson said. 

Bookings can be made at AveloAir.com.

“You can plan your trips for the summer, book as many trips as you want to any of these destinations, but you have to book the fares by this next Monday,” Olson said.

Avelo’s two-days-per-week flight schedule at MacArthur is a “limited frequency” starting point, according to Olson, who said the company does that to “make sure that the planes are full and that we’re flying to the right places.” 

Olson said the airline will tweak its presence in Islip depending on how much demand exists. That could involve anything from changing destinations to expanding its flight schedule or pulling out of Islip entirely, he said.

“It can take months or years [to decide], it just depends on the level of demand. But it can also work in the reverse,” Olson said. “If a market is not working, we also will move very quickly to either switch destinations or pull out, which hopefully is not going to be the case here.”

Olson said there’s no anticipated time frame for when Avelo will have enough information to gauge its future presence at MacArthur.

He said the airline selected the two North Carolina locations because “we actually saw that there are already a lot of people flying to Wilmington, North Carolina, from here,” but there were no direct flights to that area.

In a statement, Avelo CEO Andrew Levy said he was "excited to bring our reliable, convenient, and affordable service to New York and Long Island. ... We are very proud of the presence Avelo has established in the Northeast and we are very excited about the addition of ISP to this important region.”

MacArthur has steadily added carriers in recent years as the travel industry has rebounded after the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily grounded flights.

JetBlue launched service from MacArthur to Florida in October and has since announced it would add summer service to Boston starting April 30.

Carpenter said the town is “always talking” to other airlines about establishing a presence in Islip. She told Newsday that aside from Avelo, there’s “nothing formal” in the works, but the town is “planting the seed [with other airlines]. That’s how it works.”

And the town continues to pursue other types of airport expansion.

Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state would spend $150 million to develop a connection between the airport and the Ronkonkoma Long Island Rail Road station. The project depends on unspecified town and Suffolk County plans to redevelop a massive county-owned parking lot between MacArthur and the train station. 

“We’ve invested significantly in the airport … we’ve even introduced a full-time K-9 [unit] for additional security arrangements,” said Islip Town Board member John Lorenzo, whose district encompasses MacArthur Airport. He added that the town board is “committed to expanding this economic pillar of our region.”