THE DIGEST

A ROUNDUP OF RECENT NEWS

LOW-COST CARRIER LANDING AT ILM

Wilmington International Airport officials announced in April that the airport had landed its first low-cost carrier, with routes that were anticipated to start June 30.

“Low fares have arrived,” ILM director Jeff Bourk said at a news conference about Avelo Airlines, a startup that touts having lower fares because of its use of larger planes.

Between fist pumps, officials shared that Avelo was launching two nonstop routes out of ILM to Orlando International Airport and Tweed-New Haven Airport in Connecticut – both locations previously lacking direct connections to ILM – and a seasonal route to Baltimore/Washington International Airport.

ILM has been trying to court a low-cost carrier for years. Historically, the bulk of ILM’s traffic is made up of business travelers, who use legacy carriers American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.

Avelo’s nine new weekly flights will represent 15% of ILM’s total passenger traffic, according to Bourk (last year, ILM served nearly 906,000 passengers, still shy of its 2019 pre-pandemic record that broke 1 million passengers).

“It’s a major amount of service,” Bourk said of Avelo’s new stops. “It’s 170,000 seats they’re putting in this market.”

Wilmington Health, a multispecialty medical practice that has been seeing patients in the area for 50 years, on June 6 celebrated the opening of its new ambulatory surgery center (ASC).

The center, 1305 Glen Meade Road in Wilmington, is a 20,000-square-foot facility licensed for one operating room and three procedure rooms.

The ASC allows Wilmington Health to perform same-day preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic surgical procedures.

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HEALTH CARE GROUP OPENS SURGERY CENTER

800

Number of homes purchased between 2016 and early May 2022 in Riverlights, a 1,400-acre master-planned community on River Road in Wilmington