Avelo Airlines contracted to start charter deportation flights for ICE May 12. Already scheduled??????

[Amaryllis]

https://lionswire.usatoday.com/story/news/local/2025/04/07/avelo-airlines-to-provide-deportation-flights-for-ice/82980935007/

(FYI, Indivisible had a protest of Avelo yesterday at Hollywood Burbank Airport.)

Budget carrier Avelo Airlines, which served Redding before pulling out last year, will start deportation flights for the U.S. government next month.

The company announced it has signed an agreement to provide charter flights for the U.S. Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement.

The charters will be based at the Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona, and Avelo will use three 737-800s to operate the flights, the company said. The 737-800 can seat from 162 to 189 passengers depending on how it is configured.

Avelo spokeswoman Madison Jones said the flights are scheduled to start May 12.

“Flights will be both domestic and international to support the Department’s deportation efforts,” she wrote in an email.

“With this, Avelo will open a base at AZA with Avelo pilots, flight attendants and aircraft technicians, as well as appropriate local leaders. We expect to begin hiring locally for these positions immediately. Current Avelo Crewmembers (employees) will have the first option to transfer to our new AZA base,” she added.

In a statement, Avelo Airlines CEO Andrew Levy said:

“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic. After significant deliberations, we determined this charter flying will provide us with the stability to continue expanding our core scheduled passenger service and keep our more than 1,100 Crewmembers employed for years to come.”

At least one community where Avelo serves is concerned about the news.

More at link.

[Vinca]

1. If a plane takes off with people who haven't been given due process, arrest the pilot for kidnapping.

That might wake up the company.

[snowybirdie]

2. Protests

should not allow these flights to take off. Harder still, employees should refuse to fly.

[J_William_Ryan]

3. We're already in a Constitutional crisis.

Trump will continue to remove immigrants from the country lawlessly and absent due process with impunity and in defiance of the courts.

[Mike 03]

4. Knowing the airline and the day the flights start, maybe this means

the flights can be observed on one of those flight-tracking websites.

Although Mesa is only an hour from where I live, I'm unfamiliar with this airport. But airports are good places for protests.

[kimbutgar]

5. The pilots, flight attendants and airline workers should go on strike against this airline.

[struggle4progress]

6. Protest at Sonoma County airport

More than 100 protesters lined Airport Boulevard near the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport Saturday to denounce Avelo Airlines’ decision to fly deportation flights for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement agency as it ceases its local base operations.

[struggle4progress]

7. North Bay activists call for boycott of Avelo

Dozens of activists lined the entrance of Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, urging people not to fly Avelo Airlines.

[sakabatou]

8. Right then. Arrest the C-Suite and any of their pilots who take part in it

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. Protests are breaking out across the U.S. against Avelo Airlines after it agreed to help the administration carry out de

Protests are breaking out across the U.S. against Avelo Airlines after it agreed to help the administration carry out deportations.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/avelo-airlines-protests-trump-deportation-flights-rcna203762

Earlier this month, dozens of people gathered at an airport in New Haven, Connecticut, to protest a small budget airline called Avelo. The company, which markets itself as a consumer airline for the general public, recently signed a contract with the Trump administration for the use of its planes, flight attendants and everything else for deportation flights......

When it comes to the principle of the matter here — when it comes to the Trump administration’s mass deportation program and locking people up indefinitely in a foreign prison without any opportunity to contest the allegations against them — it is one thing to engage with this as a member of the public. When it comes to the public, you can see from the polling, the protests and the signs people are holding on street corners, that they are repulsed by what Trump is doing and the way he is treating immigrants and the way he is handling deportations. Among the public, there is a big national backlash against that......

Avelo responded by not answering any of those questions. Instead, the airline told Connecticut’s attorney general that he has a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the situation and advised him that if he wants a copy of its contract with the Trump administration, he is welcome to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the government.

The airline did, however, add this: “Avelo remains committed to public safety and the rule of law, as evidenced by our public, continuous, and persistent compliance with all federal regulations governing commercial air travel in the United States.”

In a statement, Tong called Avelo’s letter “insulting and condescending to the people of Connecticut who have invested in and committed millions of dollars to Avelo’s success.”

“What’s more, telling the Office of the Attorney General to pound sand and to ask the Department of Homeland Security for a copy of their contract through FOIA is a callous back-of-the-hand that shows they really don’t care what we think,” Tong wrote. “It is clear all they intend to do is take state support and make money off other people’s suffering.”