Allegiant air, my favorite Airline I have never flown.

So me and Allegiant airline are buddies Yet...I have never flown on Allegiant air. Not to say I have never wanted to. Trust me. If circumstances were different and I had a family member who would be willing to watch my kids for a weekend I'd probably be writing about how much Allegiant sucks or an opinion piece on how they can make their airline better. I can't do that. The airline I have always wanted to try, I have never been on.

I believe the first time I had heard of Allegiant was in 2007. My wife and I were friends with a newly married couple. The wife was still in the marriage transition stage. You know where you want to hang out with your single friends and your husband can't join you so you travel alone. So she wanted to go home to California and visit her family. She didn't have alot of money but found tickets through Allegiant for like 29 dollars. Her entire round trip ticket was less than 100 dollars. A steal back then.

Soon after I too looked up their prices and where I could fly too. Choices were really slim back then. I think Mesa Arizona had like 3 destinations. I know one was to California and one was to Bend Oregon. I'm not sure where the other destination was. Didn't matter. Back then I would have taken either just to get away. I made some wishful plans to fly to Bend but it was impossible to get away. My wife's parents just went through a divorce and work was not allowing any time off.

In 2008 we moved to Utah. From time to time I would check Allegiants website to see if they had also moved to Utah. In 2010 we bought our first home. In my garage above a picture of my oldest daughter I had a black and white picture of an Allegiant airplane at Pheonix Mesa gateway airport. Below it I wrote "some day"

(Not the actual photo. The photo I had was of the MD80)

In 2011 one of my favorite quick vacations was to Wendover Nevada. Back then (and still today) I truly believed that I would have a life-changing Lucky moment. I worked 4 days a week and would have Mondays off. Wendover had the best deals on Sunday night so a few times (as far as I remember 3 times between 2011-2013) we would on a whim book a room and head to Wendover with our kids and try our luck at the the slot machines. I believe all 3 times we went we ended up losing. The last time we went My wife went to the casino first (because of our small kids, only one of us could go gamble at a time)and she won 7 dollars. I went and lost 20. I was so humiliated and desperate for my wife not to find out so I took out another 20 dollars out of the atm from a separate bank account we hardly used and lost that too. In total with the ATM fee I lost 43 dollars. That was alot of money to us back then. It was hard to keep our bank account above 200 dollars. Years later after we had nearly 10 grand in our account I admitted to my wife I had Lost money that night. How'd she take it? We had over 10 grand in our account. How do you think she took it? I slept in my bed that night. If my wife found out the night I lost it, I'd probably be sleeping outside our hotel room 'lol'.

In Wendover they have a museum and some old ruins from a military base at the airport. From what I remember there was an old swimming pool that had been taken over with weeds and some old buildings. When we headed over to the museum I noticed a large group of people entering a building to be screened before leaving on an airline. I thought that was odd because I didn't think Wendover had flights. I talked to the employee at the museum and she informed me that Wendover does Charter Flights. Basically once or twice a week they fly people in from certain destinations for a few days and fly them back. My timing may be a little off, but I believe around 6 months later we again returned to that musuem. It was then for the first time I saw my first Allegiant airplane. Wendover had switched airlines for their Charter flight program. Allegiant air were finally within a reasonable distance (90 miles) to where I could justify a flight.

Again this was all wishful planning and for the price of a round trip ticket would be only a one way for me and my wife, but the round trip tickets were still cheaper than a one way ticket. My pricing may be a little off, but you could get a ticket between 79-129. A good price even for a one way. I had several moments looking at destinations having wishful planning that never happened. Again my plans for a ride on Allegiant faded away as I grew to a reality of responsibility and Parenthood.

In 2011 the city of Provo Utah thought it would be a great idea to add a commercial airline to their Airport.

From the daily Herald dated March 2 2011.

"Denver-based Frontier Airlines has announced it will start providing the first scheduled commercial air travel out of the Provo airport in June, according to Mayor John Curtis and Frontier executives. The announcement comes after several years of strategic planning, airport improvements and a $500,000 grant from the FAA last fall that helped forward negotiations."

This is a longed-for day," Curtis said. "I truly believe this is a game changer."

Haha. Yeah right. Imediately after reading this and watching news reports I was like. Are you guys kidding me? Then I wondered maybe it will be good? Maybe they will offer competitive pricing?

Nope!

I believe they had only one flight. That was to Denver and a one way ticket was around 212 to over 300 dollars. Not very competitive especially compared to Allegiant air.

Later that year the Daily Herald did another story.

Frontier Airlines had its first flight out of Provo. All of the politicians and big Whigs either were on the flight or had a comment about the flight. Everyone was excited.
I was not

From the Article dated June 22 2011.

Gov. Gary Herbert was among the first to arrive at the airport Tuesday. "This has been a long time coming," he said. "I was born and raised here and a things have changed a lot. I always thought Provo was kind of like Andy Griffith's Mayberry RFD. This is a red letter day. Mayberry RFD is all grown up."

Mr Herbert later said,

"Frontier sees there's a role to play here. I think it's wise and prudent," Herbert said.

Yeah. Not as wise as bringing Allegiant air but it will take a year for Provo and Frontier to figure that out.

Congressman Jason Chaffets also gave a comment on this article.

"This morning's flight is a real flight for me. I'm going on to Washington, D.C.," Chaffetz said. "It took a leap of faith for Frontier to invest in this. Anytime an airline comes into an area, it puts you on the map. Provo is on the map."

Frontier did invest yet they also got a GRANT of 500k from the FAA

Later the article goes on to say,

Chaffetz also talked about the advantages of doing more business between Denver and Provo and the other positives about this new connection and service.

"I think this will be such a benefit to business here and in Denver," Chaffetz said. "And no body scanners. It's a win-win for everyone."

When I read this article for the first time I was practically talking to my computer screen. This is not a good idea. Having a slightly lower cost airline going to one destination is not going to work in Provo.

From the article,

Notables on the plane include several department heads and leaders in state and Provo city government, including Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, the Provo Municipal Council, Utah County commissioners, Travel and Tourism Bureau representatives, BYU president Cecil O. Samuelson, BYU mascot Cosmo and more.

So was Frontier a good choice? Not as good as Allegiant. In the first article it mentions that Provo had Frontier first on it's list. I wonder what number Allegiant was, or if it was even on the list.

Over one year later Frontier announced it was ending it's flights to Provo.

In the Daily Herald article dated Sept.15 2012.

The headline read.

"Frontier airlines to stop Provo flights"

Politicians were shocked! I was not.

From the article,

When the mayor first heard the news he said it was a shock to his system.

"There has been a lot of emotional investment put in to this by the community. It stings a little. We've proven to the world we can support commercial flights."

The mayor noted that Frontier had made comments to him about leaving earlier on, but always said, nope we're staying. He was hoping this announcement would be the same.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, has flown out of Provo and his first reaction was one word, "Bummer!"

Chaffetz added, "Chalk it up to a good solid test and we passed. Someone will come in. The demand is there, the supply will follow."

Here's my opinion of why it didn't work out. Frontier was having financial problems at the time and yes that's was a factor but in the very first article where everyone was hyped up about Frontier coming to Provo Nu Skin made a comment,

Nu Skin, the fifth-largest employer in Provo, expects its distributors to make good use of the new air service. "We have 800,000 distributors that fly in all the time for conventions and meetings," said Gary Garrett, vice president of Nu Skin.

So did a local businessman

Mark Openshaw, local businessman and member of the airport board said, "I have a business partner in Castlerock, Colorado. I'd love to see this service."

In the entire article not one college kid nor every day hard working non business non politician say anything! This airline was not catering toward an everyday person or to a college town who's tuition cost are suplimented by tithing. From the beginning it was obvious they were catering to buisness woman and men.

While this whole failure played out Allegiant finally moved to Utah!

Ogden apparently had more insights on how well a low cost airline would do well in a smaller airport.

In September of 2012 Ogden started flying Allegiant. Soon after Provo followed. Allegiant has NOT failed like Frontier DID. Here we are almost 7 years later and Allegiant is still going strong. Here we are 12 years after I first wanted to try Allegiant and I still have not.

I did want to go in depth on the 60 minute investigation on Allegiant but I am losing interest in this post. I did want to say this. 60 minutes was aired on April 15th. Two days later Southwest airlines had an inflight accident where they had a death caused by a mechanical failure and decompression. How many people have died on Allegiant? Don't get me wrong I like Southwest. I just thought the investigation was very directional and had a broader purpose than airline safety. I truly think they wanted Allegiant to suffer financial loss so other airlines wouldn't have the competition.

So why am I writing all of this? Well for several reasons. One I'm adding a flight on Allegiant to my bucket list. Second I'm adding it as an alternative to my ransom and third even though it's wishful planning, I am putting plans to have a weekend getaway to Vegas on Allegiant. It's in the crosshairs it's on the bucket list it's on the blog.

Allegiant, give me chance to try ya...