Originally Posted by
UVU Wolverine
A lot of those issues stemmed from their MD-80 fleet (but not all). I'm a private pilot myself and did not fly Allegiant after a different
incident I read about in LAS. This incident, had the failure occurred perhaps 30 seconds later, likely would have resulted in all on board perishing. It's a very similar situation to
Alaska 261. It seems that Allegiant had a very bad stretch over a year or so where constant issues were arising. I haven't flown them since, but I wouldn't hesitate to anymore as the FAA looked into their maintenance practices heavily. Don't let the "new" airbus fleet fool you though as about 12% of their fleet is around 20 years old still despite being all Airbus A319/A320.
Same. I've been in the left seat of 50+ year-old trainers on and off since 1995 and spent nearly as much time training with Civil Air Patrol, and Allegiant absolutely terrifies me. Unfortunately, they're the only carrier with direct flights between SFB and TRI, so I fly them more often than I'd like. At least the newer A320s don't literally have visible duct tape like like old MD-80s did. That's at least somewhat more comforting.