Allegiant Air travel tips

Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, September 15. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Although the U.S. airlines are continuing to make progress in their recovery from the pandemic, the industry is grappling with an ongoing pilot shortage. And it may only get worse in the next decade.

When an airline knows its core customers are anything but frequent flyers, is there any point in hosting a loyalty program? Probably not. Which explains why Allegiant, the low-cost leisure-focused carrier based in Las Vegas, never rolled out a full-fledged frequent-flyer scheme. There’s just no return-on-investment when your customers are by definition infrequent flyers.

The last of Allegiant Air’s aging fleet of MD-80 planes took its final flight this week, hopefully putting an end to years of safety and reliability concerns swirling around the carrier’s use of an outdated aircraft. Early MD-80 models debuted about 40 years ago, and have been since retired by most other airlines.

Have you questioned flying Southwest since its deadly engine failure made headlines this spring? The incident might have overshadowed a watershed safety moment for another low-cost airline—one that’s long faced questions about its safety: Allegiant Air.