New entrant Breeze Airways had put on sale two new airports: Islip, for the Long Island region, and West Palm Beach. Eight routes are coming, each starting in February. They're all currently unserved, low frequency, and connecting the dots. Only one has been served before, showing Breeze Airways is doing exactly what it was set up to do.

What's happening?

It has been over half a year since Breeze Airways' first revenue-generating flight from Charleston to Tampa took off on May 27th. In this time it has bedded in its initial expansive network, made changes and cuts where appropriate, and has now launched its next round of new routes, all of which will use the Embraer 190 or 195.

  1. Islip to Charleston; twice-weekly from February 17th
  2. Islip to Norfolk; four-weekly from February 18th
  3. West Palm Beach to Akron Canton; once-weekly from February 19th
  4. West Palm Beach to Charleston; once-weekly from February 19th
  5. West Palm Beach to Columbus; once-weekly from February 19th
  6. West Palm Beach to New Orleans; once-weekly from February 19th
  7. West Palm Beach to Norfolk; once-weekly from February 19th
  8. West Palm Beach to Richmond; once-weekly from February 19th

All but one route is brand-new. The exception is Columbus, which Frontier served between November 2018 and April 2019 twice-weekly using the A319 and A320, OAG reveals. Before this, it saw Delta in March and April 2008 using 50-seat CRJ-200s.

Breeze's new routes
Notice how similar in length most of Breeze's coming routes are. Image: GCMap.

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West Palm Beach is underserved

In 2019, nearly four in ten (36%) domestic West Palm Beach passengers transited en route, booking data suggests. There are large numbers of decent-sized unserved markets in the east and midwest from the South Florida airport, although most involve airports not currently served by Breeze.

With around 43,000 round-trip passengers in 2019, Columbus is the largest of the airline's new routes from West Palm Beach. With one-way fares from $59, against an average existing fare of $165, it will somewhat stimulate new demand and grow each market, although this will be very limited with a once-weekly offering.

  1. West Palm Beach to Columbus: approximately 44,000 round-trip passengers
  2. Richmond: 23,000
  3. New Orleans: 22,000
  4. Norfolk: 20,000
  5. Charleston: 16,000
  6. Akron Canton: 10,500 (excluding passengers leaked to Cleveland)
Breeze Embraer
Looking at Islip, Breeze will serve Charleston on a 'W' basis. Crew and aircraft will route Norfolk-Islip-Charleston-Islip-Norfolk. Photo: Breeze Airways.

Now 42 routes

Between December and May, the latest month bookable, Breeze now has 42 routes across 18 airports. Charleston, Tampa, Norfolk, New Orleans, and Hartford have more seats than any other airport, while Charleston to Hartford and Providence are jointly the most-served routes.

  1. Charleston to Hartford: 25,768 round-trip seats, from December 1st to May 2nd
  2. Charleston to Providence: 25,768 seats
  3. Akron Canton to Charleston: 24,604 seats
  4. Richmond to Tampa: 24,052 seats
  5. Norfolk to Tampa: 23,172 seats
  6. Charleston to Tampa: 20,768 seats
  7. Tampa to Fayetteville (Northwest Arkansas): 20,768 seats
  8. New Orleans to Richmond: 20,300
  9. Hartford to Norfolk: 20,088 seats
  10. Norfolk to Providence: 20,088 seats

What do you make of the new routes? Do you expect to fly them? Let us know in the comments.