Bringing back what one purchases is one of the main challenges around going on a wine tour in another city (or even just visiting any place with a history of alcohol production).
FDA rules prohibit having alcohol not served by the airline or purchased in the duty-free on international flights in the cabin while the weight limit of checked baggage makes bringing more than a bottle or two impractical. There is also the risk of a bottle breaking during transit and damaging the rest of one’s belongings.
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Knowing that many of its passengers are flying into its base at Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport to tour the wineries, low-cost carrier Avelo Airlines just launched a “Wine Travels Free” program in which passengers on the return flight can check one case of wine free of charge as of May 25.
Avelo offers to make one’s trip to California ‘that much more memorable’
“We know that visiting the vineyards and sampling Northern California’s world-famous wines is one of the most appealing reasons for visiting the Sonoma County region,” Avelo’s CEO Andrew Levy said in a statement. “At Avelo we love helping our customers discover new experiences and create lasting memories by offering affordable, convenient, and reliable air travel. It is our hope Avelo's new ‘Wine Travels Free’ program will make our customers’ trips to California Wine Country that much more enjoyable and memorable."
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Avelo runs flights from Sonoma to Maine’s Portland/Salem, Oregon’s Bend/Redmond, Idaho’s Boise, Montana’s Kalispell, Nevada’s Las Vegas and California’s Palm Springs and Los Angeles. Any passenger older than 21 booked on one of those flights will get one case of wine, which Avelo defines as a single box of up to 12 bottles weighing less than 50 pounds total, checked independently of any checked luggage which typically costs $50 for a basic fare.
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Want that free case of wine? Here is what you need to do
To get it checked for free, travelers also need to pack the wine into a cardboard box and seal it properly with tape and packing styrofoam if the contents move around. It must also be identified as the case of wine to the gate agent when checking in for the flight.
Avelo, which was launched out of Houston in 2021, has quickly carved out a market by offering flights to smaller airports often not served by larger airlines. Last year, it launched several flights out of Central Wisconsin Airport (CWA) in the southeastern part of the state while more recently it set its sights on the south with new flights between Tweed-New Haven Airport (HVN) in Southern Connecticut and Charlotte's Concord-Padgett Regional Airport (JQF) and Tweed-New Haven to Atlanta.
The carrier then often becomes the de facto airline of choice among those who live in a city like New Haven and previously would have had to either drive two hours to JFK or Newark or fly from their regional airport with a transfer. At the moment, Avelo flies to 52 cities in 23 states along with Puerto Rico and says it has served 4.5 million passengers on 36,000 flights.
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