Avelo has made it clear that its newfound focus is on alternate airports in areas with good-sized population, and so far it has found New Haven, Lakeland (FL), Concord (NC), and Wilmington (DE). We had already learned number five would be McKinney (TX), and now schedules are loaded.
For those who don’t know how the Metroplex is structured, You have Fort Worth to the west and Dallas to the east. When it opened, Dallas/Fort Worth was planted in the middle as an airport to serve the whole region. This was supposed to shut down commercial service at all other airports in the area, but we all know the story of Southwest and Love Field.
So, DFW became the big monster in the middle while Love Field in Dallas remained a regional operation limited, at least on larger aircraft, to flights within Texas or surrounding states. Over time those restrictions went away. The only remaining restrictions are not having a customs/immigration facility and on the total number of gates, which keeps it small and limited almost entirely to Southwest. Some of the final other restrictions have now expired.
Over time, some airlines have occasionally tried to make a go of service in Fort Worth, but it never lasted. Mesa ran flights from Meacham (FTW) to Houston/Hobby in 1997 for a couple of months. I don’t think anyone has ever tried Alliance (AFW), though it is was home to an American Airlines maintenance base.
Over time, the Metroplex has grown, as Metroplexes do… and the bulk of that growth has gone north and east. While Fort Worth may have some attractiveness to someone, it’s the wrong direction compared to where the growth is. And so steps in McKinney. The only problem? Well, see that green dot for yourself…
That’s right. Godzilla opened up a human bbq joint right between those northeastern ‘burbs and the main airports, so it’s been a real problem for residents there. After all, those town are growing fast in that direction. In 2000, McKinney had fewer than 55,000 residents. That’s approaching 250,000 today. And that’s just McKinney itself. Collin County in total has risen from just shy of 500,000 people in 2000 to about 1.3 million today. Median household income in the county has risen from $77,000 in 2000 to about $125,000 in 2024.
In short, you have a large and growing population with some money to spend and a long, perilous drive to the nearest airports. And by “long,” I mean half an hour with no traffic… which means more than half an hour but not actually all that long for someone like me who lives in the LA area.
So, McKinney decided it wanted an airport terminal. Voters shot down a bond measure in 2023, but the city decided to budget for it. And now it’s getting ready to open. Avelo was the first one to take the bait. It will start service on November 11 with B737-800s as follows:
- Fort Lauderdale and Orlando (Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
- Fort Myers (Wednesday, Saturday)
- Las Vegas and Tampa (Monday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday)
Yes, this is Avelo, so it is not flying every day on any of these, at least not to start. And Avelo is virtually unknown in the Metroplex, only having a twice weekly flight from New Haven to DFW today. Undoubtedly this is going to come with a lot of marketing money from McKinney and presumably a whole host of other incentives to be the first one in the door. Awareness and then changing behavior will be the biggest challenge.
This market does fit Avelo’s modus operandi well, but it’s just unclear if this will be enough to work. While there are similarities to what Avelo is doing in New Haven — closer to a wealthy population center where Avelo is the dominant airline — there are also real differences.
For example, from Bridgeport in Connecticut, you have to drive an hour in no traffic to get to the nearest big airport while New Haven is only 25 minutes. Traffic to the New York airports can be nightmarish with Google saying a Monday morning could be over 2 hours. From McKinney, DFW tops out at 45 minutes on a Monday morning commute.
You also don’t have the same kind of systemic delays as you do in places like JFK and LaGuardia. Sure, you get storms rolling through, but that’s different than just general congestion. It doesn’t feel like as much of a hassle when you’re looking to book a flight.
Then there’s the issue of flight frequency. People who want to go to Fort Myers will either have to take one of the twice weekly flights in each direction or they can fly American 4-5x daily. Orlando? Sure, Avelo has 5x weekly, but during peak times, American has more than 10x daily, Southwest has 8x daily, and even Frontier runs a couple daily. FRONTIER. Frequency matters.
That’s not to say this won’t work for Avelo. It clearly has looked for some of the biggest leisure markets. Though my regular data source doesn’t have the full DOT data which now includes segmenting by advance purchase, Courtney at Visual Approach keeps his own database and pulled this for me.
Dallas Metroplex % of Nonstop Tickets Purchased > 90 days in Advance
DOT O&D Data via Visual Approach, markets include all DAL/DFW > 150 PDEW in Q1 2026
What you’re looking at in the chart took all markets with more than 150 daily passengers each way in Q1 2026 and then ranked them by the percent of nonstop tickets purchased more than 90 days in advance. Tickets purchased that far out are almost entirely going to be for leisure travel, so a high percentage suggests it’s a leisure market.
As you can see, the purple markets are the new options from McKinney that Avelo will fly. San Juan probably isn’t on Avelo’s initial list because of how far it is. Miami is expensive, and Salt Lake, well, that might be an opportunity at some point but that is probably more about visiting friends and relatives and less about pure leisure vacationing. The ones Avelo chose are just big vacation markets.
As mentioned, it’s not clear to me whether these will work since we’ve never seen service in McKinney before. But there are a lot of people there, and they would probably really appreciate a shorter, less painful drive to start their family vacation if they can get it. Then again, if they don’t earn those AAdvantage miles or Rapid Rewards points, will those people survive?
