In the four years since its first flight, Avelo Airlines has gained loyal customers by serving smaller cities like New Haven, Conn., and Burbank, Calif.
Now, it has a new, very different line of business. It is running deportation flights for the Trump administration.
Despite weeks of protests from customers and elected officials, Avelo’s first flight for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement appears to have departed on Monday morning from Mesa, Ariz., according to data from the flight-tracking services FlightAware and Flightradar24.
According to FlightAware, the plane is expected to arrive in the early afternoon at Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana, one of five locations where ICE conducts regular flights. Avelo declined to comment on the flight and ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The airline’s decision to support President Trump’s effort to accelerate deportations of immigrants is unusual and risky. ICE outsources many flights, but they are usually operated by little-known charter airlines. Commercial carriers typically avoid this kind of work so as not to wade into politics and upset customers or employees.
The risks for Avelo are perhaps even greater because a large proportion of its flights either land or take off from cities where most people are progressives or centrists who are much less likely to support Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. More than 90 percent of the airline’s flights arrived or departed from coastal states last year, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm. Nearly one in four flew to or from New Haven.