Fledgling airline Breeze Airways is adding eight new routes to its service, including flights into New York for the first time.
The airline, launched over the summer to serve smaller locations primarily on the East Coast, will add two flights to and from Long Island, and six flights serving West Palm Beach, Florida.
“Breeze’s business model is to add nice, new nonstop flights on routes where only connecting service is offered by other carriers,” Breeze founder and CEO David Neeleman said in a statement.
Neeleman knows a little bit about the airline industry, having founded JetBlue, Morris Air, WestJet, and Azul Brazilian airlines before launching Breeze this year.
Eight New Routes
The new routes, with introductory fares as low as $39, include flights between Long Island, New York, and Norfolk, Virginia, four days a week; and between Long Island and Charleston, South Carolina, on Mondays and Fridays.
The West Palm Beach routes will fly exclusively on Saturdays and will feature direct flights to and from Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia; Akron and Columbus, Ohio; New Orleans; and Charleston.
“People want to get to Florida, especially South Florida, during the wintertime,” Neeleman told the Palm Beach Post. “So it’s a great place to kind of escape, starting that time of year, to fly out and enjoy some great sunny weather and everything that Florida has to offer.”
All of the new flights will begin the third week of February.
In addition to the above-mentioned cities, Breeze flies to Hartford, Connecticut; Providence, Rhode Island; Tampa, Florida; Pittsburgh; Louisville, Kentucky; Huntsville, Alabama; Bentonville, Arkansas; Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma; and San Antonio.
New York Is Ready
Long Island gives Breeze an opportunity to serve the New York market without flying directly into Kennedy International, LaGuardia, or Newark, New Jersey. It’s also a natural fit for the airline, which maintains a maintenance base there.
Long Island officials are excited about the addition of the new airline.
“With Breeze here and the history of its founder, this is going to be successful, and it’s going to be something not only for our residents, but residents of the Island, for that matter,” Islip Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter told Newsday.
Breeze Keeps It Simple
Breeze’s planes carry between 108 and 118 passengers and offer just two types of seating: Nice, which is standard, and Nicer, which offers extra leg room at the front of the plane.
Breeze also encourages all of their bookings, check-ins, and boarding information to be done online or on the airline’s app, and it offers no fees for changes or cancellations.
“When I started JetBlue, it was like a customer service company that just happens to fly airplanes. This is a technology company that happens to fly airplanes,” Neeleman said. “You use Uber or you use Amazon or Lyft (because) you don’t want to talk to anyone. You just want to handle everything on your app, and that’s the way we’ve structured our airline.”
