Avelo Airlines, a low-cost airline operating direct flights between New Haven, Connecticut and Traverse City’s Cherry Capital Airport (TVC), has become the target of national backlash after signing a government contract to fly deportation flights for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That backlash came to a head last weekend, with protests taking place at dozens of Avelo-served airports across the country, including TVC. How might the controversy affect Traverse City and its airport? The Ticker takes a look.

Avelo launched TVC operations last June, offering nonstop service between Traverse City and Tweed-New Haven Airport (HVN) in the summertime. 

“It's one of our newest flights,” TVC CEO Kevin Klein says of the Avelo route. “Last year, it gained traction all summer long, and load factors ended up in the 70s [percentage of seats filled per flight]. This summer, that route came back with twice-a-week flights – currently, we’re on a Wednesday/Saturday pattern – versus once-a-week flights last year.”

So far, Klein says Avelo’s trajectory with TVC has been comparable to other new-to-the-area flights or airlines, which typically “take a few years to gain traction.”

“But seeing the protests and things like that, that could be detrimental to the Avelo service,” Klein says. “Which would be sad, because that only hurts our community.”

“This flight is a crucial part of our East Coast connectivity,” concurs Autumn MacLaren, TVC’s director of air service development and marketing. “New Haven, along with Boston, Philly, and New York, are key to our growing connections out east, and beyond. It’s important to keep those flights growing and keep the name recognition out there for all our airlines.”

Klein says he hasn’t inquired with Avelo yet about whether the airline has seen a decline in ticket sales for its TVC flights amidst the national controversy. But that controversy is certainly there, stemming from Avelo’s announcement in April that it had signed a contract with ICE and would start operating charter flights for deportation purposes the following month.

According to reporting on the matter from the New York Times, Avelo CEO Andrew Levy informed staff of the new partnership in April, explaining in an internal email that the company’s leaders had decided “after extensive deliberations” that the ICE contract – which is reportedly worth around $150 million – “was too valuable not to pursue.”

The Times also reported that Avelo is “struggling financially,” and that Levy indicated to employees that the ICE contract was intended to help “stabilize” the company’s position. But aviaton experts had said the decision was “risky,” given the politically-charged nature of immigration in the U.S. right now and the fact that Avelo primarily serves “cities where most people are progressives or centrists who are much less likely to support Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.”

Avelo’s partnership with ICE inspired reprisal from some circles, including the formation of a nationwide “Coalition to Stop Avelo.” The group claims Avelo is “aiding in the illegal removal of individuals without their rights to a fair hearing or due process.” It is encouraging protests and boycotts against Avelo, lobbying city and state officials to “review, suspend, and terminate Avelo contracts and subsidies,” and considering lawsuits “against cities and states that continue to fund Avelo in violation of their own laws and values.”

The Coalition was the driving force behind last weekend’s protests at Avelo-served airports, including demonstrations in Traverse City, New Haven, Houston, and Mesa, Arizona – the last of which is the airport Avelo has so far used as the takeoff point for its deportation flights. The TVC protest was organized by the Leelanau Indivisible group, with support from Traverse Indivisible.

Speaking for the local Indivisible groups, Traverse Indivisible leader John DeSpelder says the organizations are not calling for a boycott of Avelo or its Traverse City flight, but are hoping for some action from the airport.

“We’re sympathetic to the airport’s position, because this is new territory for them, ” DeSpelder says. “They have always been very pro-business, and they’ve got some objectives that I think Avelo would help them meet, in terms of being able to open up into the East Coast. In that respect, [this flight] is a great thing for our community. But we would still love to see the Airport Authority make some statements about what their concerns are.”

Traverse Indivisible’s stance, according to a written statement, is that Avelo’s “complicity” in ICE’s alleged violation of constitutionally-guaranteed rights “isn’t an abstraction” for the northern Michigan community. “Just 70 miles south of here, in Baldwin, the GEO Group [a private prison company] is preparing to open the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest,” the statement reads. “There is a distinct possibility that Avelo’s deportation flights will come in and out of TVC to serve that facility.”

Klein dismisses that possibility.

“I've heard all kinds of rumors about people or groups opening different detention facilities across Michigan, and that they're going to fly out of here,” he says. “Those are only rumors. I've heard absolutely nothing about that actually happening. Our stance as an airport is there are absolutely no deportation flights into or out of Cherry Capital Airport.”

As for TVC taking a harder-line position on the matter, such as breaking its relationship with Avelo, Klein tells The Ticker that no commercial airport has the ability to make such a choice. Unless an airline is failing to meet its “full contractual responsibilities,” that airline can’t be turned away.

“We’d be in violation of federal regulations and grant assurances,” Klein explains. “We cannot discriminate against airlines serving our airport. We would lose our federal dollars if we did that. And losing federal funding would mean losing all funding to expand the terminal, all funding for any runway construction, any taxiway construction, for snowplows, for fire trucks, and so much more.”

“It’s similar to a federal highway,” Klein continues. “Federal highways have to allow all kinds of traffic, and we do as well. We have runways, and we have to allow the airlines to use them. That’s why highways receive federal grants, and it’s why we receive federal grants.”

When asked for comment on recent protests, Avelo Communications Manager Courtney Goff shared the following written statement: “The safety and well-being of our Crewmembers (employees), Customers and all individuals involved is our highest priority. While we recognize the right of individuals to peacefully assemble, Avelo's main priority will continue to be maintaining the safety and timeliness of our operation.”

Goff did not directly address if Avelo is reconsidering its contract with ICE or if that contract has affected ticket sales.