Analytics align for Allegiant adding service to RSW

About 10 years of talks between Allegiant Air and Southwest Florida International Airport will culminate in November with the start of the company’s first flights to and from RSW.

Appleton, Wisconsin; Allentown, Pennsylvania and Des Moines, Iowa, will continue service to Punta Gorda Airport, while adding additional service to RSW.

Allegiant Vice President of Planning Kristen Schilling-Gonzales said the three new routes to RSW were the result of years of analysis. She explained that the Las Vegas-based airline waited for the right market conditions and data trends before moving forward with adding more flights to the region.

“We’re a bunch of data nerds,” Schilling-Gonzales said. “My team’s looking at who’s going where. Where do customers want to go?

“We have a team here at Allegiant headquarters that’s been doing the analysis of it. And it finally worked out in terms of what our passenger requests looked like, what we’ve been hearing in our passenger surveys, what the airport space looked like at both airports — all the airports involved and what our future expectations looked like.”

Allegiant officials said the airline carried more than 1 million passengers to PGD between May 2024 and April 2025. Including outbound flights, that total rises to about 2 million passengers.

For now, just the three routes are planned to and from RSW, but more could be in the works, depending on their success, Schilling-Gonzales said.

“We started in Punta Gorda in 2009,” she said. “So it’s been quite a while that we’ve been able to serve the greater region. And we’re really pleased to be able to further expand down the coast.”

This year more than 7,700 flights, an average of 21 flights per day, have been scheduled from PGD to 51 routes.

The 51st route, effective Nov. 21, will be to New Orleans.

A 52nd route from PGD, to Atlantic City, New Jersey; will begin Feb. 13, 2026, Allegiant officials announced Aug. 13.

But out-of-area customers began demanding Fort Myers as a destination in addition to Punta Gorda.

“We’re expanding our footprint in Southwest Florida with our service,” Schilling-Gonzalez said. “This is more because we’ve seen this continued demand from our customers. They want to see more of the coast. They want to go directly into Fort Myers. They want to get to be able to get to Marco Island quicker. They want to go down the coast faster.

“We’ve been talking with folks at the airport at RSW for many years. We see them at conferences all the time.”

Most of Allegiant’s traffic begins out-of-market, she said.

“Generally, we’re seeing the folks looking to come down to sunny Florida, especially during the winter months,” Schilling-Gonzales said. “But if you’re looking at the late spring and early summer, when some of the northern states get a little bit nicer for Floridians to come and visit, you might see a little bit more Florida-originating traffic. In general, maybe it’s about two-thirds or three-quarters of the people generating from the north, coming down south.”

Adding a second airport to service Southwest Florida should enhance Allegiant’s standing as a brand and make the airline even more competitive, she said.

“We hear from passengers all the time, they love the SWFL region so much,” Schilling-Gonzales said. “They’re just looking for more options. We’ll see how these first routes go. If they do well, we’re always looking for additional routes.”