Allegiant Air has quietly scrapped 13 routes into Myrtle Beach, the family-favourite South Carolina resort town it has served since 2009. A comparison of its 2026 and 2027 schedules, cross-checked against its own booking engine, shows all 13 markets disappearing — most ending in August 2026, with a couple trailing off in October and November.
The axed routes span nine states: Atlantic City and Newark-area travellers lose the Atlantic City link, alongside Belleville (Illinois), Clarksburg and Huntington (West Virginia), Dayton (Ohio), Fort Wayne (Indiana), Grand Rapids (Michigan), Lexington and Louisville (Kentucky), Indianapolis, Niagara Falls and Elmira (New York), and Hagerstown (Maryland). Several were short-lived revivals — Dayton and Grand Rapids had been dropped before and only recently brought back, while Atlantic City and Elmira barely lasted a single season.
The Atlantic City experiment is the most telling. Allegiant picked it up from Spirit Airlines, which had flown it for 29 years until ceasing operations in early 2026. US DOT data shows Allegiant carried 11,453 passengers between March and August 2026 at a healthy 80.5% load factor, yet the route was pulled after barely five months — suggesting fares were too low to make it stack up. Breeze Airways has since taken the route over, launching in October.
It's not a full retreat. Allegiant still plans nine routes from Myrtle Beach into mid-May 2027: Akron/Canton, Albany, Allentown, Cincinnati, Columbus Rickenbacker, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Stewart and Syracuse. But capacity is being trimmed hard — 217 departures between January and May 2027, down 31% year on year. Akron/Canton takes the biggest hit, falling from 26 departures to just eight, with service starting in May rather than March.
The good news for beach-bound travellers: every one of the nine affected states still has Myrtle Beach service from someone. Illinois keeps American, Southwest and United from Chicago; Indiana retains Southwest from Indianapolis; Michigan has Delta from Detroit; Maryland keeps Southwest from Baltimore; and New Jersey is covered by Breeze and United. New York travellers are arguably best off, with Allegiant, American, Breeze and Delta all serving the market from multiple airports.
Why does this matter? Allegiant built its Myrtle Beach presence on small and mid-sized cities that legacy carriers ignore, so if you live near one of the dropped airports, your cheap nonstop to the sand is gone — you'll likely need a connection or a drive to a still-served airport. On the flip side, Breeze is expanding at Myrtle Beach, so competition isn't drying up entirely. Book early for summer 2027 either way: with Allegiant's departures down nearly a third, fares on the routes that remain are unlikely to get cheaper.
