In this provided photo, a plane to Las Vegas takes off from the Salem Municipal Airport on Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023. The flight marked the return of commercial air service to Salem after 15 years.
Provided by the city of Salem
Last week, Avelo Airlines announced it would end service out of the Salem-Willamette Valley Airport on Aug. 10.
Avelo has been operating out of Salem as the only airline carrier servicing the airport since October 2023 with weekly flights to Burbank and Las Vegas.
The budget airline also said it plans to pull out of other West Coast markets, including Eugene in December, when it aims to close its base in Burbank.
Avelo’s looming departure from Salem and other markets comes amid controversy over the airline’s decision earlier this year to provide deportation flights out of Phoenix for the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency.
That agreement has prompted a backlash against the carrier, including in Salem, where some residents have protested and urged the city council to sever ties with Avelo.
Joining us for a discussion about what Avelo’s exit means for Salem, its local economy and the future of its airport is Salem Statesman Journal city reporter Whitney Woodworth.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Avelo Airlines announced last week that it would stop flying out of the Salem-Willamette Valley Airport on August 10. That’ll be the end of commercial airline service in the state’s capital. Avelo started offering service in October of 2023 with weekly flights to Burbank and Las Vegas. The budget airline is closing its base in Burbank and has also announced that it’s pulling out of other West Coast markets, including Eugene, in December.
Whitney Woodworth has been reporting on this for the Statesman Journal, and she joins us now. Welcome back to the show.
Whitney Woodworth: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Why did Avelo announce that they’re pulling out of Salem so soon after arriving there?
Woodworth: Avelo announced last week that they were pulling out due to them closing their Burbank base. They cited aspects of financial decisions leading to it, saying it wasn’t Salem-specific or in response to the backlash they’ve been facing over their contract with ICE, but said it just wasn’t financially feasible anymore to operate out of the West Coast.
Miller: What does it mean? We’re in probably the busiest travel season right now. What about people who had flights for vacations, for reunions, or weddings?
Woodworth: There has been some frustration with that, because Avelo was known as a low cost and ultra-low cost carrier. So people are struggling last minute to find equally cheap flights, having to scramble to find destinations and trying to get refunds. Some people also have travel credits that they’ve been trying to use that they will struggle to use because Avelo will no longer be flying here.
Miller: What about airport employees – folks who have been working for Avelo or just other people who support operations there?
Woodworth: The city is still trying to figure out what this means for Salem. Interim City Manager Krishna Namburi said during the July 14 city council meeting that they would be crafting a financial report about how this is going to financially impact the city. I know a lot of people are hoping it’s not the end of commercial service but just a temporary setback and that there could be another carrier possibly coming in.
Miller: What have you heard from other city or business officials about Avelo’s announcement?
Woodworth: A lot of business leaders expressed disappointment. They worked really hard, especially leaders with the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce and Travel Salem. They worked really hard to attract a commercial carrier to Salem. They expressed disappointment, but some resolved with working to attract someone else so that Salem is not left without a commercial carrier for an extended period of time.
Miller: Did Salem resident taxpayer money or Oregon taxpayer money go to Avelo in order to lure them to the airport?
Woodworth: Back when the city was preparing to try to attract commercial carriers, they did invest $2.3 billion to get the airport ready for commercial service. This wasn’t directly for Avelo. And there was a revenue guarantee fund to encourage commercial providers to come to the airport. That had $850,000 from the federal government. And Travel Salem helped raise $350,000 to basically give a commercial carrier, in this case Avelo, two years of being able to guarantee revenue. So if they could not turn a profit some months, they were given this revenue. I was told by the city that about 70% of that had been used so far.
Miller: As I mentioned, Avelo had really limited service, just a few flights a week and only to Burbank and Las Vegas. Do you know how popular the service was?
Woodworth: When they did a study of what commercial service was bringing to Salem, they found that each flight had about 117 people on it. So people were using the service. They were hoping, city leaders and business leaders, that having just the small amount of flights would help them build off of it and attract more destinations, either through Avelo or through other carriers, and be able to fly out to other desirable locations … because they found about 90% of Salem travelers were going to other airports.
Miller: They hoped that this would lead to others. Obviously, so far that hasn’t happened and now we don’t even have these two.
Woodworth: Yes, correct.
Miller: How much do local officials say these flights did contribute to the local economy when they were happening … or they’re still happening, but they’re about to end.
Woodworth: It was bringing quite a lot of money to Salem, according to a study done. Travel Salem reported that it brought in about $31.7 million and 37,000 visitors between October 2023 and March 2025. People were coming in, staying in Salem hotels, going to Salem businesses, eating at Salem restaurants, and exploring nearby attractions like wine country and the coast.
Miller: Right around the time that Avelo announced they were going to be bringing passenger travel back to the Salem Airport, they also announced that they were going to be canceling flights between Dayton, Ohio and Florida that they’d started just seven months before. I mentioned that when I interviewed the president and CEO of Travel Salem, Angie Villery, back in October of 2023. I asked if that put any fear in her heart. This was part of her response:
Angie Villery [recording]: To be honest, I wasn’t concerned when I had heard what happened in Ohio. I feel for that market, though, because I know how much you invest and how excited you are to get service. But here in Salem, we feel very, very confident that we have the right folks that are flying out of our market here – 1,200 are flying every day out and 1,200 are flying every day in. So we have the confidence, the data and the carrier where we’re flying to, and it’s just all the right mix.
Miller: Have you heard any misgivings from Travel Salem now that Avelo has pulled out of Oregon as well?
Woodworth: Not from Travel Salem. They’ve kind of doubled down on their resolve to keep working to bring commercial carriers here and just finding the right one. Some people see it as just a very “Avelo-specific” issue. The commercial airline industry is facing headwinds with pilot shortages and aircraft issues. But a lot of people in the community didn’t want to see commercial service come to Salem and don’t want to see any further investments now that Avelo is no longer here. They say that Salem should work on better connections to PDX and Eugene to help people get there, and they expressed concerns over city funds to support it and the environmental impact.
Miller: There is another wrinkle here that you mentioned briefly, but I want to drill into that now. Can you tell us about the Stop Avelo Coalition in Oregon?
Woodworth: Yes, after Avelo announced that they would be contracting with ICE to provide deportation flights out of an airport in Mesa, Arizona, protests and calls for boycotts emerged nationwide.
In Salem, we had the Stop Avelo Coalition that would do protests. They’d go out to the airport and talk to passengers. They’d go to city council meetings and urge city leaders to end the contracts they had with Avelo, to stop the revenue guarantee fund, to stop the operating agreements. This went on for weeks. Dozens of people showed up. It was a very passionate crowd. The city did do an informational report looking at what it would mean to end these contracts, and it basically put them at risk of being sued and paying millions of dollars to develop for breaching the contract.
Some city councilors spoke out against Avelo – Councilor Vanessa Nordyke said she was proud to live in a sanctuary state and city, and that Avelo’s actions were corporate greed at its finest. Matthew Boulay, he is with the Oregon-based Stop Avelo Coalition. He said their financial troubles they’re facing right now is because of the growing power of organized opposition. Just to note, Avelo did say that they’re not pulling out because of the protests, but people who were working to get Avelo out of the city do see this as a victory.
Miller: Yes, so in that press release, after Avelo announced they were pulling out of Eugene and Salem, the group wrote this:
“Avelo continues to be a poorly financed, poorly managed company. They got themselves into financial trouble and took the ICE 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.”
Is there any way to know if that’s true? Did Avelo see a drop in bookings because of their new ICE contract?
Woodworth: It’s hard to pinpoint that. I think we’ll know more once the city releases a financial report, but signs have been pointing to the company struggling for a while. Last year, for just a brief time, they offered flights from Salem to Sonoma County and then they canceled them pretty quickly due to low demand. Then, even earlier this year, they stopped doing flights to Vegas for a good chunk of 2025.
Miller: Whitney, thanks very much.
Woodworth: Thanks so much for having me.
Miller: Whitney Woodworth is a city reporter for the Statesman Journal.
I should note that we did reach out to Travel Salem to invite them on the show. They declined until a new carrier has been secured for the airport. They did write this: “Travel Salem and the Fly Salem Committee are continuing efforts to recruit another carrier. Our focus remains on expanding air travel options, bringing new visitors to our destination and strengthening our regional economy.”
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