Welcome Aboard, Lakeland
PHOTOS BY JORDAN RANDALL | DEVELOPED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH VISIT CENTRAL FLORIDA
As the Boeing 737 descends, one of Lakeland’s most successful businessmen and his wife are wrapping up a fun weekend getaway with some of their closest friends.
After checking out new hiking trails, enjoying some wonderful meals together and creating lifelong memories with a handful of other couples, Mark and Linda Hulbert are preparing to get back to work Monday, and it’s a more seamless process than they ever dreamed.
As their Avelo flight lands, they grab their bags, walk a couple of hundred yards to their vehicle and drive roughly 10 minutes to arrive at their front door.
“To say that it’s convenient is an understatement,” says Mark Hulbert, the founder of award-winning Hulbert Homes and a generous philanthropist in the community. “Parking, bag check and security was seamless—it’s unbelievable it’s right here in Lakeland.”
Lakeland International Airport (LAL) has played a pivotal role in the development of Central Florida for more than 80 years, but for the first time in more than a decade—and with a more defined and hopeful runway for long-term success—people like the Hulberts can skip getting on I-4 and utilize the airport for business and pleasure alike.
Since June 2024, more than 45,000 passengers have come through the turnstiles of LAL as travelers on Avelo Airlines, a low-fare airline focused on convenience and customer service that has become profitable in less than four years and who recently earned the distinction as “America’s Most Reliable Airline” in 2024 based on flight-cancellation rates and on-time arrivals and departures.
“It’s simple, basic air transportation,” says Trevor Yealy, Head of Revenue for the Houston, Texas-based company. “We want to make sure we get you to and from your destination on time so you can spend more time at your destination, you can spend more money at your destination, whether it’s for a vacation or it’s with loved ones or family.”
Avelo currently offers six round-trip destinations in and out of LAL, and will add Nashville, Tenn. as its seventh in March.
LAL Airport Director Kris Hallstrand is all smiles these days as she chats with customers grabbing snacks from the MarketplACE in the terminal or greets fellow Lakelanders returning from a trip. She never had aspirations to operate an airport that had commercial services for passengers, but during the last year she is having the most fun of her 20-plus year career, in part because she is seeing the incredible dividends of nearly 1.5 years of negotiations to bring the right commercial carrier to LAL.
“During that process of the initial meetings, I was looking for a partner. I wasn’t looking for someone who was going to walk into our community, burn a bunch of money and walk away,” she says.
Hallstrand said it’s clear Avelo is the right partner because they believe in who Lakeland is and who it is becoming, based on their experiences on the ground and the data they continue to collect to help guide their decisions.
Hallstrand said some of the favorite routes from the first half-year of flights seem to be to Rochester, NY and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Yealy said ideal routes for Avelo are ones that have desirable destinations on both ends, and with Tampa and Orlando both within 60 miles, Lakeland is poised to continue to add new destinations.
Some locals may have balked when an announcement came out in December 2024 that Avelo was suspending flights to Atlanta, as well as Hartford, Conn., but it’s all part of the business sense that Avelo believes will make the airlines not only sustainable, but enable it to grow significantly in the coming years. Airline staff pour over data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Census migration data (where people are moving to and from) and cell phone mobility data to determine feasible routes from what the company deems “currently underserved hubs.”
With the route from Lakeland to Atlanta in particular, Yealy acknowledges there are a lot of people flying between Atlanta and Central Florida every day, but there are a lot of existing airline options and the Atlanta market has had little exposure to the Avelo brand to this point.
“I want to put a billboard over by ChampionsGate on Westbound I-4 that says, ‘If you would’ve flown to Lakeland with Avelo, you’d be home already.’”
“It was just too early for us in Lakeland to get sufficient numbers to make the flight work…but we think in the long run it can work,” he says.
Yealy said Avelo’s mantra is to “start small and grow into it,” and that principle is evident in the fact Avelo currently has a fleet of 20 planes, up from 16 when the first Avelo flight departed LAL in June of last year.
Similarly, LAL is growing into its role as a hub for travelers and the community at-large.
Sora Eatery, a new Japanese inspired restaurant that will also feature American classics like smashburgers, wings, etc., was scheduled to open in mid-February in the location previously occupied by Waco Kitchen.
The parking situation is also set to evolve. Hallstrand said by April she expects a full parking system to be installed and operational, meaning customers who park on any of the asphalt parking spots for more than four hours will be charged a daily rate, which Hallstrand estimates could be around $9 per day.
“The reason for that is we’re an enterprise fund of the City of Lakeland, which means we do not have any taxpayer dollars coming into here from our community,” she says. “So we are government, but we are also independent on our revenues, which means that we also are quasi-business.”
For the foreseeable future there will continue to be a limited number of free parking spots on the grass.
It’s a small price to pay for the alternative of leaving hours earlier for flights and paying much higher fees for parking at other airports.
“Convenience is the number one thing—not having to sit in ChampionsGate traffic,” Hallstrand said. “I want to put a billboard over by ChampionsGate on Westbound I-4 that says, ‘If you would’ve flown to Lakeland with Avelo, you’d be home already.’”
Avelo currently offers seven routes from LAL.
Charlotte/Concord, N.C.
Manchester, N.H. / Boston
Nashville, Tenn.
New Haven, Conn.
Philadelphia / Wilmington, Del.
Rochester, N.Y.
San Juan, Puerto Rico