Breeze announces service at New Haven

The once sleepy airport of New Haven, CT is now a battleground as a pair of new airlines seek to capture the hearts, minds, and dollars of travelers. Three years after Avelo set up shop at the airport, making it a key component of that airline’s strategy, Breeze Airways is set to join the fray, with plans for 10 destinations to be served beginning this winter.

From ‘Day One’ our playbook has included significant growth across the Northeast region of the U.S. due to the high population density and limited nonstop travel options. As a result, our unique model of air service has been a game-changer for this area of the country, giving residents affordable flights from convenient airports such as Hartford, Westchester County, Providence, Stewart-Newburgh, and now, New Haven, just to name a few. – Lukas Johnson, Breeze Airways’ Chief Commercial Officer

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Breeze plans to start with 17 weekly departures from December 10th, serving four Florida markets: Fort Myers (5x), Orlando (5x), West Palm Beach (5x), and Vero Beach 2x). The service will grow from there in February, with another six markets and 14 weekly departures added.

Six of the ten Breeze destinations at New Haven (Charleston, Orlando, Fort Myers, Sarasota, Raleigh-Durham, West Palm Beach) are also served by Avelo.

Avelo currently operates approximately 100 weekly departures from New Haven. The 31 that Breeze plans is notably smaller. But this also is presumably just the beginning.

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Breeze’s push into New Haven comes just a couple weeks after Avelo announced plans to launch service at Hartford (BDL), a crew and aircraft base for Breeze. Avelo’s move there was partially driven by a desire to add international service from the northeast and a lack of facilities to support that in New Haven. Breeze also indicated it plans to launch international services from Hartford, once it receives approval from the FAA to operate outside the US. It expects to be able to sell those routes before the end of 2024.

Both Avelo and Breeze chose a similar approach to managing their fleets in Connecticut, with a dual-airport base operation. The two airlines each assigned crew to the shared base and able to bid for work at either airport, increasing flexibility of the operation.

Both airlines also pitch themselves as targeting underserved markets with convenient, point-to-point service (plus BreezeThrough markets for Breeze). By launching competing services, however, it appears they are grabbing less unique traffic and instead battling with each other. Perhaps there truly is unlimited demand from the northeast to Florida, though reports of excessive domestic supply in recent months (and prior year challenges for both Spirit Airlines and Frontier) suggest there is, eventually, a limit that will be reached.

And watching two smaller airlines fight each other for those markets rather than seeing a larger airline pushing them around is certainly an interesting twist.