Laid off from Avelo Airlines.

What Avelo Airlines layoffs have meant for employees

The layoff notices since 2025 sit at places Avelo closed, the bases at Burbank, Mesa, Raleigh-Durham and Wilmington, North Carolina, and a site in McKinleyville, California. The flights can outlast a base. Avelo's January 6 release had the airline still serving Raleigh-Durham from New Haven and Rochester, and Wilmington from four other cities, after the bases there went away. Burbank went further, because Avelo left the West Coast altogether. In North Carolina the airline stayed and the base jobs went onto closing notices. So a flight schedule with your airport on it says little about your job. If you were based at one of these airports, what mattered was whether the base stayed, and a plane at your old gate didn't answer that.

The state numbers count jobs on a notice. How many people actually left is a separate question, and Avelo's own statements kept it open. The furlough number was "in flux due to relocation of crewmembers to our other bases" and to growth at Lakeland and Dallas/McKinney, spokesperson Courtney Goff told Port City Daily in January 2026. Positions still had to shrink "due to our smaller fleet and network," chief executive Andrew Levy wrote to staff, Straight Arrow News reported. Those notices come to 306 jobs since 2025. If your job was on one, the count can't tell you whether it's among those that moved or those that ended. Wilmington's launch announcement anticipated 50 jobs, and its closing notice listed 82.

Avelo's statements on these closings describe transfers, though the wording changed from one closing to the next. Its statement to KRCB in April 2025 gave current crewmembers "the first option to transfer" to the new Mesa base. That July the offer to California-based employees was a move to one of three other bases, LAmag reported. By January 2026 Levy's word was "some." Not every base lasted. Santa Rosa ran almost a year by Avelo's count and Wilmington about 11 months. Mesa, the base with the first option, ran under nine months. If you're weighing a transfer, how long a base has been open is one more thing to set against the cost of moving.

The deportation charters connect directly to Mesa, where Avelo based three jets and ran no commercial flights. A spokesperson told AZFamily the program "did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs." In April 2025 Levy had said that flying would give Avelo the stability to "keep our more than 1,100 Crewmembers employed for years to come." Avelo's reasons elsewhere were about money and competition, with low demand at Santa Rosa, returns it called inadequate at Burbank and Wilmington markets most of which, it said, couldn't support more than one airline. Those are the company's own accounts. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA told members it was "hopeful that with the end of the ICE flying and new financing, the future is more stable for flight attendants at Avelo."

The same January release that announced three closings also planned a new base in Dallas/McKinney for late 2026, and Goff named that base and Lakeland as where the growth was. If a return to Avelo is on your mind, those are the two its own statements pointed to in January 2026. For your own records, the five notices since 2025 are filed in our WARN tracker under Avelo Airlines and the 2018 notice under XTRA Airways, the airline's name before 2021. Our pages on North Carolina unemployment, Arizona and California cover the three states on those notices.

A sourced history of Avelo Airlines layoffs

• January 2026, Raleigh-Durham and Wilmington base closings

  Avelo said in a January 6 release that it had been recapitalized and would close both North Carolina bases while serving each airport from other cities. North Carolina's WARN list shows closing notices effective March 6, and ABC11 reported 78 layoffs at Raleigh-Durham and 82 at Wilmington.

• January 2026, Mesa base closing and end of DHS flights

  The Mesa base had a January 27 closing date, AZFamily reported, which would end Avelo's Homeland Security deportation charters, and a spokesperson said the closing would affect 97 employees. Arizona's notice is dated January 7, our tracker shows.

• July 2025, Burbank base closing and West Coast exit

  Avelo said it would shut Burbank by December 2, and LAmag reported California-based employees could transfer to Hartford, Charlotte or Wilmington, Delaware. California's WARN report shows September notices for 38 jobs in Burbank, effective October 21, and 11 in McKinleyville, effective November 18.

• April 2025, Santa Rosa base closing

  Avelo planned to close its Sonoma County base by May 1, almost a year after opening it, KRCB reported. Its statement cited low demand and said the move had nothing to do with its Homeland Security charters.

• March 2018, XTRA Airways notice before its sale

  XTRA Airways, renamed Avelo in 2021, filed a Florida notice dated March 22 listing 167 jobs, our tracker shows. Andrew Levy bought XTRA that August, AvGeekery's airline history says.

What to do if you're laid off from Avelo Airlines

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Avelo Airlines's biggest hubs: North Carolina, Arizona, California. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Avelo Airlines's hub states run: North Carolina, Arizona, California, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.