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CHARLESTON, South Carolina—Fresh from closing on its acquisition of Sun Country Airlines, Allegiant Air is offering clues into how it plans to manage the combined fleet of 195 aircraft.
Allegiant gained swift approval for the merger, closing on May 13, roughly four months after it unveiled plans to buy Sun Country and eventually unify the combined company under the Allegiant brand.
Although obtaining a single operating certificate will take more than a year, Allegiant is already plotting how to manage a fleet that will include Airbus A319/A320ceos, Boeing 737-8s, 737-800s/900ERs and 737-800 freighters operated under an ACMI agreement by Sun Country for Amazon.
Allegiant CEO Greg Anderson told attendees at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Americas 2026 in Charleston, S.C., the two carriers have roughly 22 bases. “I would think of a base, for us, almost as an airline within the airline; everything’s out and back.”
Aircraft types will be assigned to specific bases, he explained, offering the examples of Las Vegas as an A320 base, and 737s in Fort Lauderdale and Minneapolis. Isolating aircraft base-by-base helps ease some complexity of the combined fleet, he explained.
Asked if he could envision placing 737 MAX aircraft operated by Allegiant on Sun Country’s routes, Anderson’s answer was a definitive yes.
Pointing to fleet flexibility, Anderson said roughly 163 aircraft in the combined fleet are owned, with an equity value of more than $2 billion, which helps protect the company’s balance sheet “when we see stress type situations or scenarios that we’re in today.”
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