Breeze Airways, a brand-new airline, is experiencing challenges on some of its routes.
Most significantly, as shown in Cirium timetables and confirmed by airline spokesperson Gareth Edmondson-Jones, the carrier will stop operating its transcontinental route between New York and Los Angeles as of May 1.
The route needed an excessive amount of personnel and aircraft resources given the roughly six-hour flight time. Additionally, according to Edmondson-Jones, the flight time wasn't ideal for Breeze's operations.
The New York to Los Angeles market is served by a large number of reputable airlines. None have, however, attempted Breeze's plan to fly from Westchester County Airport (HPN) to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), which Breeze believed would be successful.
I've never had to wait more than five minutes to pass security at HPN because it's so easy to navigate. It also has an extremely wealthy catchment area, which includes some areas of Connecticut where getting to the main airports in the New York City area would ordinarily take a two-hour drive.
Breeze believed it could persuade enough locals to fly with it rather than its rivals flying from busier and larger airports, even without luxurious lie-flat seats. One-way introductory prices for flights on the airline's spacious Airbus A220-300 aircraft started at just $149. Starting at just $249 round-trip for the finest seats (almost domestic first-class recliners).
As he did 16 years ago for JetBlue Airways (another airline he created), Breeze founder and CEO David Neeleman believed he could make White Plains, New York, a significant market for Breeze. But this time, his goals appeared to have been a little too lofty.
Actually, for the airline's HPN operation, the Los Angeles route was the sole (kind of) successful transcontinental market. Despite starting a few months later than anticipated, the flight has at least been operating consistently on an almost daily basis since November.
The same cannot be said for San Francisco and Las Vegas, the two further cross-country routes that Breeze had originally planned to establish from White Plains, as the airport is affectionately known by the residents. Flights to San Francisco were terminated before they even took off, and service to Vegas was only in operation for three weeks before it was similarly cut back.
In addition to Breeze's unsuccessful transcontinental trial, the airline is modifying service from HPN to a few southeastern locations. At the end of May, the airline will discontinue serving Sarasota Bradenton International Airport (SRQ), and following Labor Day weekend, it will temporarily halt service to Norfolk International Airport (ORF) and Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (SAV).
With the end of the summer timetable, two dozen additional seasonal routes in addition to New York will come to an end. These seasonal options were just introduced, and they'll be gone by the weekend of Labor Day.
These "seasonal shifts and the re-directing of resources" during the winter schedule, according to Edmondson-Jones, are taking place. In his statement, he stated that "basically all of the routes below will be back by/for summer 2024." Breeze is a leisure-focused airline, thus the company makes schedule adjustments as necessary to match changing demand patterns, he added.
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