The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Breeze Airways adding 7 new routes at Bradley
WINDSOR LOCKS — Breeze Airways announced Thursday the launch of seven new routes at Bradley International Airport, an expansion that comes one year after the startup began service at the state’s flagship airport.
The new Breeze flights will take off this week to Nashville, Tenn.; AkronCanton, Ohio; Savannah, Ga.; Richmond, Va.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and SarasotaBradenton, Fla. In September, it will start flights to Las Vegas. Other than Nashville and Las Vegas, all of those destinations are new routes to Bradley.
Breeze had committed to adding new routes at Bradley when it announced in February that it would make the Windsor Locks airport its fifth base of operations, with plans to create more than 200 jobs in Connecticut. In addition to the seven new routes, Breeze already operates nonstop flights from Bradley to Columbus, Ohio; Norfolk, Va.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Charleston, S.C.
“Over the last 12 months, Breeze has been a tremendous partner at Bradley International Airport,” Kevin Dillon, executive director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, which owns and operates Bradley, said in a statement. “With the launch of the new flights, we have reached an exciting one-year milestone as their New England base and are thrilled to celebrate their network expansion which now includes a total of eleven destinations.”
Most of the new routes will be operated on Breeze’s fleet of new Airbus A220s following the airline’s rollout of the aircraft.
“The addition of the Airbus A220-300 is a gamechanger for us as we can now serve Hartford (area) guests not only up and down the east coast but all the way to Las Vegas,” Breeze founder and CEO David Neeleman said in a statement. “The A220 offers travelers the widest cabin, highest ceiling, largest windows and biggest overhead stowage in this class, while still managing to burn 25 percent less fuel, with half the noise footprint of past generations, and everyone loves to fly on it.”
Neeleman is a serial airline entrepreneur. In addition to the Salt Lake Cityheadquartered Breeze, he also launched Azul, JetBlue, Westjet and Morris Air.
The state Department of Economic and Community Development is supporting Breeze’s expansion at Bradley. If the airline creates and retains 212 full-time positions, it would receive a grant totaling $1.262 million over seven years. It might receive a smaller grant if it creates fewer jobs.
Just across the Connecticut-New York line, Westchester County Airport also figures prominently in Breeze’s plans. In April, the airline announced it would expand to Westchester with daily, nonstop flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Charleston; nonstop flights several days per week to Jacksonville, Norfolk and Savannah; and one-stop, same-plane service several days per week to New Orleans.
While it is still feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which decimated air travel in 2020, Bradley has been steadily adding routes since the first half of 2021. In another promising sign for the airport, Air Canada resumed flights to Toronto on Wednesday after a two-year break.
In the first three months of 2022, about 1.2 million passengers passed through Bradley, according to CAA data. That total equated to a 113 percent jump from the same period in 2021, but it was still down about 20 percent from the same timeframe in 2019.