It turns out that deporting people for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency isn’t the profit booster Avelo Airlines had hoped.
The budget airline announced a new network strategy on Tuesday designed to strengthen its balance sheet after years of inconsistent earnings, including the closure of several bases and the removal of six aircraft from its fleet.
Among the closures is Mesa, Arizona — the core of Avelo’s chartered aircraft support for the federal government’s highly controversial mass deportations. A company spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that this also means the end of its ICE contract.
“Avelo will close the base at [Mesa] on January 27 and will conclude participation in the DHS charter program,” they said. “The program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.”
The airline began operating these deportation flights in May but received significant backlash from travelers and faced protests at airports like Albany, Burbank, and New Haven, Connecticut. Avelo has not disclosed the amount it has received from the government.
It has also downplayed the political optics.
Avelo’s CEO, Andrew Levy, previously framed the decision to fly migrants out of the US as financially driven, acknowledging that it is a “sensitive and complicated topic,” but said the ICE charters would provide the company with stability and keep its crew members employed.
A spokesperson in April said that Avelo had also operated deportation flights under the Biden Administration.
“Regardless of the administration or party affiliation, as a US flag carrier, when our country calls and requests assistance, our practice is to say ‘yes,'” they said. “We follow all protocols from DHS and FAA, honoring our core value of safety always.”
Charter airlines Miami-based Global Crossing Airlines and Kansas City-based Eastern Air Express have long carried out deportations on behalf of ICE. GlobalX, for example, said its five-year contract awarded in 2024 is expected to generate roughly $65 million in annual revenue.
But activists said Avelo’s involvement reflects a broader shift in the deportation system, as it’s unusual for scheduled commercial airlines like Avelo to dedicate aircraft and crews to ICE flights.
This focal point of criticism coincides with the broader expansion of deportation activity under the Trump Administration that prompted ICE’s need to enlist additional operators.
There were nearly 12,000 deportation, domestic shuttle, and other removal-related flights across operators between President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20 and November 30, 2025, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Human Rights First.
The Avelo flights are also reportedly not meeting the expected safety standards. Avelo’s flight attendant union said in a September memo to Avelo management that the cabin crew “were discouraged or prohibited from performing safety checks and cabin walk-throughs required by the FAA.”
It added that there weren’t any aircraft modifications that would allow restrained passengers to evacuate during an emergency.
The cabin crew working these ICE flights were specifically hired for this role, as were pilots and mechanics. According to the April cabin crew listing, pay started at $28 per hour.
Going back to its roots
Avelo’s operation once stretched coast-to-coast as the airline expanded aggressively into new markets in search of demand.
But competition intensified, and Avelo struggled to achieve consistent profitability as rivals like Breeze Airways — along with legacy carriers offering low-cost basic economy fares — lured away price-sensitive customers.
The airline has been reshaping its network and fleet in response to those pressures for years.
As part of that retrenchment — and beyond the now-deemed money-losing ICE flights — Avelo announced an order for Embraer E195-E2 aircraft, a smaller regional jet that marks a shift away from its traditionally all-Boeing fleet.
Avelo also closed its entire West Coast operation in October due to low demand and pivoted its focus to the East Coast. The carrier also plans to exit its base at Bradley International Airport in Hartford, Connecticut, in January, axing routes to Montego Bay and Cancún. The airline cited revenue underperformance.
Further, Avelo is closing bases in Raleigh and Wilmington, North Carolina. It will instead focus its operations out of four core airports: New Haven, Connecticut; Wilmington, Delaware; Charlotte, North Carolina — operating out of the city’s smaller Concord-Padgett Regional Airport — and Lakeland, Florida.
Avelo said it plans to open a base in McKinney, Texas, near Dallas, in late 2026.
This pivot reinforces the airline’s strategy of connecting secondary airports to larger cities while still accessible to major metropolitan areas — for example, its Delaware base serves the Philadelphia region, and Lakeland sits between Orlando and Tampa.
“These changes enable Avelo to focus on sustainably scaling five core bases in 2026 and to prepare the company for growth in the coming years, facilitated by the company’s recent order for up to 100 Embraer 195-E2 aircraft,” the company said.
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