After deportation protests, Avelo stops West coast service

This story has been updated with a statement from a local advocacy campaign, Avelo Out of EUG.

Avelo Airlines, whose bargain passenger flights came under scrutiny because of the company’s activity in connection with charter migrant deportation flights, announced Monday, July 14 it will end passenger service from Eugene.

Though no such deportation flights occurred out of Eugene, local advocacy groups nevertheless pressed for an end to Avelo’s presence in the city and elsewhere in Oregon.

But a company spokesperson said the decision to pull out of Eugene came down to an analysis of financial returns for flights to Burbank, California, the destination for the carrier’s lone route out of Eugene.

Neither “[p]rotests nor our contract with (Department of Homeland Security) had any effect on our decision and have not impacted our business,” Courtney Goff, the company’s communications manager, said in a statement.

Operations at other airports are also affected, as the carrier pulls the plug on all of its West Coast flights in favor of supporting routes along the East Coast, the company’s CEO said in a statement.

The last flight from Eugene to Burbank will be Dec. 1, four and a half years after the carrier first began providing service to Eugene passengers. Assistant Airport Director Andrew Martz said no other carrier currently flies directly into Burbank but that Avelo (pronounced Uh-VELL-oh) made up only a very small portion of the airport’s total traffic.

Matthew Boulay of the Stop Avelo Coalition said in a statement: “They got themselves into financial trouble and took the (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) contract out of desperation. It was a morally bankrupt deal with the devil — and now it’s backfiring, because passengers don’t want to fly Avelo.”

The coalition is a national grassroots campaign opposing the company’s contract to operate deportation flights, according to its website.

Anne Bridgman, an organizer with the local advocacy campaign Avelo Out of EUG, said in a statement that “there’s still work to do.”

“Since there are four and a half months until December 1, we’ll be staging actions at the airport to tell travelers about Avelo’s contract with ICE and their deportation flights, and to encourage them to boycott the airline. We’ll also be working with the Oregon coalition of anti-Avelo groups on statewide actions, such as asking our governor and attorney general to issue statements condemning Avelo and asking state legislators to draft Oregon-specific legislation that prohibits public subsidies for airlines who carry out deportations,” Bridgman said.

Previously, Eugene airport officials had said that they had no authority to kick out an airline, and Martz on Monday confirmed that the airline made the decision.

“Avelo notified us today,” Martz said.

Martz said that while at one time the airline flew a seasonal route to Palm Springs, California In addition to flying to Burbank, the carrier makes up only a small portion flights out of Eugene — about 1%, according to the most recent data.

Andrew Levy, the company’s chief executive officer, said in a statement that customers who have flights booked can visit the “Manage Trips” section of the company’s website to cancel flights and receive refunds.

“This was not an easy decision,” Levy’s statement said, in part.

“There is rarely one singular reason why decisions like this are made, and this one is no different. We believe the continuation of service from (Burbank) in the current operating environment will not deliver adequate financial returns in a highly competitive backdrop,” he said.