Allegiant Air’s COO talks new training center, future of airline

Chief Operating Officer Tyler Hollingsworth flew Allegiant’s Honolulu routes on Boeing 757 jets in 2012, but also became a company safety specialist in 2014.

In May, Hollingsworth became the COO with one of his responsibilities overseeing the training of all pilots and flight attendants. As a result, he spends much of his time in flight simulators away from the company’s Summerlin headquarters.

Hollingsworth spoke with the Review-Journal at an Airbus simulator in Las Vegas. The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

REVIEW-JOURNAL: Tell me about your career leading up to your May 1 appointment as chief operating officer.

HOLLINGSWORTH: I started at Allegiant in 2010. I got on as a first officer flying the famous MD-80 (Allegiant’s first fleet aircraft). I was based out of Las Vegas. I did that for a few years. We were living down in Phoenix at the time, so eventually I got positioned down there. I went through a lot of the temporary duty being a junior pilot type thing where you get moved around quite a lot. Over the next couple of years, Honolulu started opening up and in 2012, I asked my wife, “What do you think?” and we moved to Hawaii. It was the best two years of my entire life. I definitely peaked way too early in my career, but being out in Honolulu, flying the (Boeing) 757, the camaraderie, the trips. I had lots of days off, 23 days off per bid. (The FAA) began changing rest regulations and it changed how we could fly efficiently out of Honolulu, so the writing was on the wall and that base was coming to a close. I had the opportunity to either bid as a captain on the Airbus out in Fort Lauderdale off the East Coast. My wife and I had already done the Fort Lauderdale bid. Coming from Hawaii, she basically said, “You can bid wherever you like but you’re commuting if you take me out East.” So that narrowed my options. So around that time I came in for a recurring event in Vegas, ran across the then-Director of Safety Michael Wuerger, who’s now the COO of Breeze (Airways), and he offered me an interim position as a safety specialist in Las Vegas. I could come in, bide my time, learn a different skill set. My wife and I toured the Summerlin area. Found it to be acceptable. We ended up moving here in November of 2014. I started off as a safety specialist. As always, the transition is interesting because each piece of this journey comes with its individual nomenclature. So you get in there and it’s like speaking a different language, right? So that was kind of off-putting it first, learning the new language of all these different departments. But it became addictive. As you know flying has a very interesting rhythm. Takeoff and landing are high workloads. I wouldn’t say stressful because it’s what you’re trained for, but just a high workload environment. Then you get to cruise and things relax, especially on the day to day. You can chat, sit back and get ready for the next phase. The office isn’t like that. The office rhythm is pretty continuous.

RJ: It seems to me that Allegiant has a great setup to get in and out every day and you’re always home at the end of the day.

HOLLINGSWORTH: For the pilots, yeah, I mean you basically know you’re home for Christmas Day. At other airlines, you typically go on a four- or five-day trip and you’re going to miss it. At Allegiant, you’re either going to fly in the morning and have Christmas night or you’re going to fly in the evening and have Christmas morning. So it’s really, really unique to the airline.

RJ: Discuss your role as Allegiant’s chief operating officer.

HOLLINGSWORTH: One of the biggest things is building the team. I’m surrounded by some of the people that I think are the smartest and most phenomenal human beings in the industry, certainly smarter than I am, but it’s really about the interdepartment communication, the collaboration between the departments, knocking down any barriers that naturally come up when you have a diverse work group of different backgrounds, different personalities, different ages, but really how do they all come together and focus on the singular mission, which will always be safety as its number one, but running a really clean and efficient operation is number two. The controlled completion of north of 99.8 (percent), with great on-time performance lately. But the secondary question from our teams should always be, how hard does the front line have to work to get those numbers, right? If every single day I have to struggle at work to get those numbers accomplished, then as a COO am not doing a good enough job. My job is to provide those tools to make their day-to-day easier so they can continue to run a fantastic airline.

RJ: Allegiant’s headquarters is in Summerlin, but today, here we are with simulators. Is flight training a part of what you coordinate?

HOLLINGSWORTH: Yes, I oversee basically the pilots and everything that has to do with the pilots. I do have a director of training and standards who was recently promoted to the vice president of flight operations, Michelle Bathalter. I have nothing but great things to say about her. So training has fallen under my purview. And at one point in the past, around 2016, I was the director of training for Allegiant so I’m intimately familiar with this, which is why this is my comfort area. At the training center, we train pilots and flight attendants here as well. Both of those groups fall under my management as well as our station agents, our maintenance and engineering, everything having to do with operations.

RJ: Eventually, you’re looking at a new training center, right?

HOLLINGSWORTH: We’re very excited in the future as we invest in these resources. It’s a big warehouse building we’re currently building out our brand-new training center soon to open, hopefully in May of next year. If you land on 26 right or 26 left (runways at Harry Reid International Airport) if you look over to your left, you’ll see “Allegiant” on the side of this beautiful new building. We’re very excited about that next iteration in our history of training pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and team members.

RJ: So there’s also mechanic training as well?

HOLLINGSWORTH: With the multiple base structure that we have we do have a Fort Lauderdale training center so we have a little bit of still a split dynamic for the training but for mainly West Coast and a lot of the overflow that will be our centralized training. So with some of the other Western destinations, those pilots, FAs and mechanics would come here.

RJ: How many pilots and Allegiant employees are there now?

HOLLINGSWORTH: We’re around 1,300-ish pilots just north of probably 1,600 flight attendants and then overall at Allegiant, I think we’re just over the 6,000 mark. About 90 percent of them report to me.

RJ: What’s your average day look like?

HOLLINGSWORTH: I get to work at 8 in the morning, and if the calendar is looking light. I can go around and give my daily high-fives to the team members. If the operation is running smoothly and very few aircraft are out of service on the board and the weather’s holding up across the continent, I can take one of the team members out to lunch, connect with a few of the other team members. When 5 o’clock rolls around, go home, get to see my wonderful two children, one of them’s in college, one of them’s in school locally. I’ll then spend the evening with my wife as we look at each other and determine what are we going to do when the kids are finally gone as empty nesters. That’s a perfect day for me.

RJ: What do you see in the future of Allegiant Air? What are we going to see that’s different as far as customer facing?

HOLLINGSWORTH: We’re working on a lot of things and since the pandemic, as time goes on, consumers change, behavior changes, and we are very flexible and adaptable to the environment. And so I don’t really like to give out specifics, obviously, but I think that as we learn our customer better, as we leverage future technologies, we are in a really good position to take advantage of these kind of next-generation type things and deploying them as it best fits our model.

RJ: I know this is a question most airlines don’t like to answer, but I’ll ask it anyway. Where is Allegiant going to fly next?

HOLLINGSWORTH: We’re always looking for small, underserved communities. Gulf Shores (Alabama) was a newer one that we just opened. I think that fits and describes Allegiant at its best. It’s a small underserved community and we’re going to provide reliable, affordable, nonstop jet service out of these places. So hopefully 90 more Gulf Shores.

RJ: What other things are on Allegiant’s horizon?

HOLLINGSWORTH: I think as we look towards the future, it’s about ensuring that the foundation is solid. We all remember the Southwest meltdown recently, and those type of events involving technology and software. I think as we’re in this period where we have the opportunity to take a breath, we’ll say, it’s not rapid growth right now, it’s seeing what’s going on with the economy on a macro level. We’re really focused on building that foundation so that we’re ready to take advantage not only of just future IT, technology, AI, all the things that are being discussed, but making sure that our core processes are in place.

RJ: Is the pilot shortage over?

HOLLINGSWORTH: I wouldn’t say it’s over. It’s my personal opinion that we’re kicking the can down the road. Retirements are still in place. The legacies (airlines) are going to go through that source of retirement. Right now, obviously, with airlines slowing down and kind of looking at the economic outlay, that’s definitely slowed down hiring. But we’ve all been around, and certainly yourself, covering this. This is a cyclical industry. So we may be on a certain piece of the cycle, but I foresee there to be a lot of movement moving forward at some point when the Deltas and the Uniteds need to not only cover for the retirement but they want to continue to grow as well.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.