Breeze Airways said on Tuesday it plans to nearly double its network to 77 routes this spring and summer, a massive expansion for the US start-up that launched flights last May.
The Salt Lake City-based airline is the fifth carrier of JetBlue Airways founder David Neilman, which he created to meet the demand for travel between cities that the larger carriers were not serving. Avelo Airlines, another upstart founded by Andrew Levy until 2018 CFO of United Airlines, also launched last year, is a part of the underworld U.S. airline. targeted markets.
Breeze and other airlines are preparing for a strong peak spring and summer travel season after two tough COVID pandemic years. Now, with jet fuel reaching a 13-year high after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they are testing how much they can expand as costs rise.
"It hasn't been the smoothest," Breeze's chief commercial officer Lucas Johnson said in an interview.
He said the list of new flights was "slightly smaller" than it was a few months ago and the airline made last-minute changes over the weekend. Johnson said executives want to avoid changing schedules on customers later.
Still, domestic leisure travel, where the focus has been on Breeze and Avelo, has been relatively strong compared to the sluggish recovery of international and corporate travel from the pandemic
Breeze has an order for 80 Airbus A220-300 jets, a model whose fuel efficiency and range are attractive to airlines including JetBlue and Delta.
Breeze expects to get about one plane a month from Airbus, Johnson said. It has two in its fleet so far and they will start flying in May. First delivery has 36-seat first class, 10 additional legroom seats and 80 standard coaches. Later they will have 12 seats in first class, 45 in extra legroom and 80 in coach.
Breeze began flying the Embraer E190 and E195 jets.
The airline will use the new Airbus aircraft for long-haul flights: intercontinental flights such as Savannah, Georgia, to Los Angeles and Providence, Rhode Island, to Los Angeles.
Fares will start at $99 for some of the longest routes like Las Vegas to Jacksonville, Florida, which Breeze plans to launch in August. Johnson expects those fares to be snatched up quickly.
He said Breeze and other airlines are in balance as costs rise.
"You don't want to raise [the rent] too much because you're still recovering from the pandemic," Johnson said.