Breeze looks to grow Ascent cabin

What’s the right size for a premium cabin on board? Breeze Airways continues to search for that answer, with CEO David Neeleman suggesting the carrier will soon grow its “Ascent” cabin to 16 seats from the current 12 owing to strong demand.

Speaking at the World Aviation Festival in Amsterdam this week, Neeleman noted that the carrier initially launched its A220 fleet with 36 premium seats in the 2-2 layout [he said 26 in the interview, but it was 36 on board] before shifting to 12 on later deliveries and eventually 12 on all the planes. But that was also before the company had nailed down its Ascent cabin concept and tweaked the overall market segmentation.

The thing I love about the 220, even though it was a little bit late, but what we love about it, is the 2-3 [seating] configuration. When we go first class we only lose one seat per row, so we can charge less money. And then we can reconfigure a plane overnight; we can go from 12 first class seats all the way up to 26 first class seats. We had 26 first class seats for a while [n.b. – initial deliveries flew with 36, not 26, 2-2 seats on board]. We can go back. We’ll probably end up going back to 16, because we have so much demand for our first class seats. And we can make adjustments on the fly, really quickly.

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Those talking points about the A220 premium cabin – only losing one seat and quick to adjust – are not new. Neeleman has been hyping those benefits since the initial A220 deliveries back in 2022. And while the carrier did convert from the 36F layout to 12F, the larger timing issue is around being able to sell the seats, not swapping the cabin config. That takes far longer than just an overnight to adjust, especially with the planes flowing through the carrier’s network.

Smaller is better

The flexibility of the A220 cabin is a big part of Breeze’s go to market strategy. Neeleman also extolled the smaller capacity of the plane for Breeze’s target markets. In a mild jab at Spirit Airlines, Frontier, and JetBlue he noted that the Breeze team sees 200+ seat planes as oversized for most LCC-focused markets:

I went to my schedule planning team a couple months ago and I said, “Okay, guys, I just got 15 A321, Neos with 240 seats. Where should we fly them?” And they said, “To the desert.”

We don’t have a place to put those big airplanes. If you come down 100 seats like we have, and have a premium product, and you can charge the low fares, and then add charges for upgrades there’s literally hundreds of markets we can go into.

And while Breeze is still trying to figure out the optimal size of a premium cabin on board, Neeleman believes that the carrier’s decision to start with that as part of its operating structure makes it better suited to capture that market than the other LCCs, such as recent moves from Spirit and Frontier towards a premium offering on board.

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This included an unexpected (and unconfirmed, but long rumored) statement that “JetBlue announced they’re going to have first class seats,” with a years-long backlog for deployment due to supply chain issues. JetBlue did not reply to a request for comment about Neeleman’s assertions of the cabin change and has previously declined to confirm such rumors.

Avoiding hubs, competitors key for Breeze

In addition to the smaller planes, Neeleman extolled the value of focusing on the smaller point-to-point markets as a key component of the company’s operating ethos. He equates it to Ryanair‘s success in establishing operations at previously unknown airports, and creating demand rather than chasing the same passengers as other airlines.

To that point he notes roughly 90% of Breeze‘s routes have no competition, while Spirit faces competition on roughly 90% of its routes:

We have a couple of examples where we were flying around and Spirit came in and tried to come on top of us, to capitalize on our success. And in this particular 60 day period, we had a 70% load factor, and they had a 22% load factor. So they left within 60 days. So once you’re established – we’re in 220 markets today, we could easily be in 800 markets – and so if they want to come into 10 markets it really doesn’t really affect us, because it’s being diffused. So you can’t really hit us.

It is worth noting that, while Breeze aims to avoid hubs and the associated challenges, the company continues to expand its BreezeThrough one-stop flight offerings, some of which pass through the airline’s larger bases. Having recently flown one as a guest of the airline, it was convenient enough, though also a long time to spend on a plane with no real food on offer.

He also insists that there are enough smaller markets to serve with its smaller planes that Breeze won’t face direct competition and a need to enter major markets like Spirit or Frontier do anytime soon. 

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Other bits

Neeleman also shared a couple interesting financial bits around Breeze’s operations. Among them, he claimed that COVID and the associated delay in getting the carrier operational “probably cost us $150 million, because we had pilots, we had planes, but we couldn’t fly them. And then delayed our maturity curve on revenue that you use when you’re growing fast.”

He also suggested (similar to the JetBlue seats statement, unconfirmed but rumored) that Spirit would use a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to put itself in a position to be acquired by Frontier. Which would at least mean saving a few billion dollars for Frontier should that come to pass, at least compared to the price it initially was willing to pay for Spirit.