WILMINGTON — The Wilmington International Airport and one of its carriers, Avelo Airlines, announced new nonstop routes out of the Port City.
Flights will begin in spring 2025 to Rochester, Nashville and Boston/Manchester area. The schedule includes:
- Boston / Manchester, N.H. (MHT) — Twice weekly service on Thursdays and Sundays beginning April 3
- Nashville, Tenn. (BNA) — Twice weekly service on Thursdays and Sundays beginning April 3
- Rochester, N.Y. (ROC) — Twice weekly service on Fridays and Mondays beginning April 4
“Our work here is not done. Rather, it’s just beginning,” an Avelo spokesperson, Trevor Yealy, said during the announcement at ILM Wednesday.
In addition to adding more flights — bringing its destinations to 11 — Avelo announced it would also add a new base in Wilmington.
The new base in Wilmington means that one Avelo aircraft will live at the airport permanently, along with its pilots, crew members and maintenance technicians. Avelo is also adding a second aircraft base at ILM sometime in the second half of 2025.
“I hope it’s sooner — knock on wood,” Yealy told Port City Daily. “And with this, hopefully, [will] come more jobs, and of course more routes.”
Airport Director Jeff Bourk said there will be 100 new jobs opening up between the two new aircraft bases, with 50 open for the first base, including pilots, mechanics, ground crews, and flight attendants. Bourk is excited about the new jobs as it creates more opportunity to streamline students from the local high schools, through Cape Fear Community College’s aviation program, and into an aviation career.
Yealy said one day Avelo hopes to partner with CFCC’s aviation program as local jobs continue to grow with more routes being added.
“Before today’s announcement, this was our largest airport that wasn’t actually a base, because we had eight nonstop destinations,” Yealy said.
Before ILM served as a “spoke” which means Avelo airplanes would fly into the region, unload passengers, and then fly back to other home bases. Avelo also has bases at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Burbank Airport (BUR), Southern Connecticut’s Tweed-New Haven Airport (HVN), the Philadelphia / Delaware Valley region’s Wilmington Airport (ILG), the Bay Area’s Sonoma County Airport (STS) and Central Florida’s Lakeland International Airport (LAL).
“No other airport in our system has that many nonstop destinations unless it’s a base,” Yealy said of ILM. “So this was almost a foregone conclusion because we’ve had so much activity already.”
Avelo came to Wilmington in June 2022 after the company found it was a high-demand location via connecting flights from its first major base in New Haven, Connecticut. The airline tracks flight popularity based on cellphone mobility and second home ownership data, which put Wilmington on Avelo’s radar.
Since establishing the first three nonstop routes between Wilmington and New Haven, Baltimore, and Orlando, the company has established four more nonstops and served 200,000 customers on more than 2,000 flights.
The other nonstops go to three more Florida locations — Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers — a second flight to Connecticut via Hartford, and Philadelphia.
Also announced Wednesday was a second Avelo aircraft base in the state at Charlotte’s Concord-Padgett Regional Airport. The Research Triangle’s Raleigh-Durham International Airport is a crew member base as well, and is home to Avelo’s international routes.
Tickets for ILM’s three new nonstop flights went live Wednesday.
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