Breeze Airways adds Bradley routes
Breeze Airways announced on Tuesday it will add six new non-stop destinations from Bradley International Airport starting in June 2022. The low-cost airline will add new stops in:
Nashville, Tenn. Akron/Canton, Ohio Savannah, Ga. Richmond, Va. Jacksonville, Fla. Sarasota/Bradenton, Fla. The additions bring the airline’s total routes from Bradley to 10 since it launched at the Windsor Locks airport in May 2021.
Flights will take off from Bradley to Nasvhille, Akron/Canton, Savannah, Richmond and Jacksonville starting June 3, and the Sarasota/Bradenton flights will start service on June 4, according to a release. Other than the Nashville route, Breeze Airways said the remaining five destinations are new routes to Bradley International. Breeze Airways operates another four routes out of Bradley to Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio; Norfolk, Va.; and Charleston, S.C.
The announcement of the airline’s newest destinations comes on the same day that Avelo Airlines unveiled three new flight routes from Tweed New Haven Regional Airport. On Tuesday, the airline announced service to Chicago’s Midway International Airport, BaltimoreWashington International Airport and Raleigh-Durham
International Airport. Avelo now offers 13 routes from the Elm City airport and offers fares starting at $49.
With two budget airlines at airports in the northern and southern parts of the state, their fares stand in direct competition for Connecticut flyers’ business. At Breeze Airways, flights range in tier from “Nice” — which provides flyers with no change or
cancel fees, one personal item on board, reusable credit if the flight is canceled and rewards points — to “Nicest,” which offers better seating, carry-on and checked bags, priority boarding and a drink and snacks, among other perks. They also range in price based on which seating tier flyers select. For example, for a Breeze flight to Nashville on June 2, the “Nice” seating choice is
$59, while “Nicer” is $99 and “Nicest” is $149.
Despite similarly priced fares and routes, David Neeleman, the founder and CEO of Breeze Airways, said the airline's newest flight routes have “nothing to do” with Avelo.
"We essentially doubled our number of routes on sale today, from 42 to 77, with 35 new routes and 10 new cities across the country," he said. "Breeze is not
even a year old yet and we have 80 brand-new Airbus A220 planes on order. There's lots of growth to come, but it has nothing to do with what other airlines are doing."
According to Neeleman, the arrival of new Breeze Airways routes will likely encourage travel out of Bradley International Airport the same way the airline’s earlier additions have.
“When we announced service to Charleston last May, I said, ‘There are so many people who don't yet realize they are going to visit Charleston this summer,’” he said in an email. “Sure enough, in July last year, the airport announced its best ever arrivals figures."
Breeze Airways' new routes to Ohio and other southern locales comes from an increased demand for flights out of the Windsor Locks airport — and Neeleman said it likely won’t be the last of the airline’s flight additions.
“We've seen great demand at Bradley,” Neeleman said. “We started with four nonstop destinations last year and just added six new ones today along with additional frequencies on existing routes. As more and more people fly us, we'll keep adding flights and destinations."
For Neeleman, Breeze Airway’s growth has to do with increased appetite to travel, and the sky’s the limit for how much the airline might expand in the future.
“There's huge pent-up travel demand out there,” he said. “And there's plenty of evidence to show that if you give people a nonstop flight that didn't exist before, and a great price, you'll build a market maybe as big as 10 times what where there before. At Breeze, you get there twice as fast for about half the cost. That's an unbeatable situation. It's a game-changer."