This is a rough one. Not even one year after Avelo Airlines announced it would start calling our local Santa Rosa airport one of its home bases, to much fanfare, airline bosses have decided to vacate their new hub and cut all the new flights they added over the past year, along with some local crew members, according to the North Bay Business Journal.
These changes will go into effect in May, aka next month — the same month Avelo is “set to begin flying deportees under a new deal” with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Business Journal reports. So, while the airline says it’s making cutbacks in Sonoma County because of “poor financial performance,” onlookers are having a hard time not drawing a connection between that and the whole ICE thing.
Avelo will reportedly keep running nonstop flights between Santa Rosa and Burbank, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Palm Springs, California; and Bend/Redmond, Oregon. (Those last two routes are seasonal, BTW, and will continue to be.) And the airline is cutting flights between Santa Rosa and Boise, Idaho; Salt Lake City, Utah; Ontario, California; and Kalispell, Montana. More from the stranger-than-fiction Business Journal story:
“STS was selected for closure because achieving necessary financial results there has proven more elusive than expected,” [Avelo communications manager Madison Glassman] said. “With more time to build the markets, perhaps our initial hypothesis could be correct, but now is the time to utilize our aircraft in the best possible opportunities.”
A key opportunity became public this week, with Andrew Levy, CEO of the Houston-based Avelo, announcing the airline will begin flying next month for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement agency as part of a “long-term charter program” to support deportation efforts. …
Tom Cartwright, a flight data analyst for the advocacy group Witness at the Border, whose social media feeds are closely watched in immigration circles, said he isn’t aware of any other commercial airlines that have provided such flights for ICE in the past five years he’s been tracking flights. He called the decision by Avelo “unusual” considering charter companies the public likely hasn’t heard of typically make these flights.
I’ll leave you with this protest song by American folk legend Woodie Guthrie, which feels extra relevant right now:
Note from Simone: This piece originally appeared in the weekly email newsletter I write for the Healdsburg Tribune, called Healdsburg Today. Subscribe here!
