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Bloomberg
Airline entrepreneur David Neeleman’s newest carrier will begin flying from May 27 with an initial network of 16 cities,
making it the year’s second
US startup looking to use discount fares to grab a piece of a much-anticipated resurgence in leisure travel.
Breeze Airways started selling tickets, and the first flights will connect Charleston, South Carolina; Tampa, Florida; and Hartford, Connecticut, according to a company statement. Fares start at $39 one way, and destinations will be added weekly through July 22 until the carrier reaches 39 routes.
Neeleman, who founded JetBlue Airways Corp, is wagering that cheap, nonstop flights between carefully selected midsize cities will enable Breeze to carve out a market niche. But as airlines hammered by the coronavirus pandemic battle over returning travellers, Breeze is likely to face much tougher competition than JetBlue did when it expanded in 2002.
“Even being wounded coming out of the pandemic, it’s totally diametrically different from a competitive standpoint,†said Dan Akins, an airline consultant at Flightpath Economics.
Breeze will operate 13 single-class Embraer SA E190 and E195 aircraft initially, and start adding larger Airbus SE A220 planes with a premium cabin in October. It will focus most of
its flights from Tampa, Charleston, New Orleans and Norfolk, Virginia. Frontier Airlines, which went public this year, and Spirit Airlines Inc. are two potential foes for Breeze, a unit of Salt Lake City-based Breeze Aviation Group Inc. Another is Allegiant Airlines, a deep discounter that caters to budget vacationers. The Allegiant Travel unit has expanded during the pandemic and now boasts a network stretching across 43 states.
Neeleman, whose four previous startups include Canada’s WestJet Airlines and Brazil’s Azul SA, says the Allegiant model works — and can be replicated. Small markets will expand as low fares and more convenient flights entice consumers to travel more often. As much as 95% of Breeze’s flights won’t have nonstop competition, meaning it shouldn’t become the target of larger rivals, Neeleman said. The 16 cities in its early network plans include Pittsburgh; Huntsville, Alabama; and Columbus, Ohio. Like Allegiant, Breeze will seek to operate flights when demand is highest, which means not flying every day of the week from each city.