Breeze Airway begins service to Huntsville (Birmingham, Mobile: home, unemployment, maintenance)

[AU HSV]

Originally Posted by Madmom2000

I think they would add Orlando before Miami or Tallahassee.

Huntsville already has nonstop service to Orlando through Frontier and Silver.
Also Saturday only nonstop seasonal flight to Miami with American.
Tampa is a base city for Breeze, along with Charleston and New Orleans.

[RedMaple]

Breeze Airways, Huntsville’s new low-cost carrier, already cutting flights

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by RedMaple

Breeze Airways, Huntsville’s new low-cost carrier, already cutting flights

That's disappointing. Can't do much about the weather but it's up to Breeze to get its act together - if those are really the reasons to cut service. Perhaps things will stabilize with the startup in the near future.

[AU HSV]

Originally Posted by RedMaple

Breeze Airways, Huntsville’s new low-cost carrier, already cutting flights

Not just Huntsville, they have cut back flights to most of their destinations. One reason is supposedly, it is due to the FAA taking longer than expected to certify the rest of their E190s aircraft. Last weeks flights to most of their destinations were delayed by hours.

[David1502]

Originally Posted by RedMaple

Breeze Airways, Huntsville’s new low-cost carrier, already cutting flights

I think they're using the weather as an excuse for disappointing ticket sales. I have looked at the seat map for the initial flights from HSV to Charleston and New Orleans and there have been a lot of seats still available. Granted, some of those who purchased tickets for a "Nice Fare" may have chosen not to pay more to select a seat, however, those who purchase a "Nicer Fare" automatically get to pick their seats, so you would see that those seats are taken. I would imagine that their business model heavily depends on a large number of the "Nicer Seats" to be purchased, so if you see a flight with most of those higher priced seats at the front of the plane still available, they aren't making the revenue (or breaking even) that they had expected to.

In the long run, I think that the Tampa route will make it, the New Orleans route has somewhat of a chance, but the Charleston route, I would be surprised. If they can't sell out these flights while school is out, what chance do they have getting a high load factor when school is back in session. I hope that I am wrong, but so far, it looks like they may reduce some of the service. In the future, hopefully, they will consider other cities to provide service to - I'm thinking Las Vegas, Orlando, and New York. Even though Frontier already has service to Orlando, there could be room for much.

[RedMaple]

I had a family member who booked a Monday flight (HSV>CHS) in September that was canceled. I alerted her and she went online to find they had simply rebooked her to the Sunday flight but they never sent her an email or called to let her know of the change.

[Surge0001]

Man looks like Huntsville and Birmingham is doing well in the Air Commerce Department. It'll be very difficult for Mobile to catch up. We are just now starting work on an International Airport and the area is already saturated with International Airports (3 within 60 miles of Mobile)

[MisterEd51]

Has the requirement to wear a mask turned anyone off from flying? I wonder how much the slow restart for cruise lines has affected air travel. Hopefully if we can get past COVID-19 by next year thing will have returned to normal. It may be too much to expect that these new airlines will do well until that happens.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by David1502

I think they're using the weather as an excuse for disappointing ticket sales. I have looked at the seat map for the initial flights from HSV to Charleston and New Orleans and there have been a lot of seats still available. Granted, some of those who purchased tickets for a "Nice Fare" may have chosen not to pay more to select a seat, however, those who purchase a "Nicer Fare" automatically get to pick their seats, so you would see that those seats are taken. I would imagine that their business model heavily depends on a large number of the "Nicer Seats" to be purchased, so if you see a flight with most of those higher priced seats at the front of the plane still available, they aren't making the revenue (or breaking even) that they had expected to.

In the long run, I think that the Tampa route will make it, the New Orleans route has somewhat of a chance, but the Charleston route, I would be surprised. If they can't sell out these flights while school is out, what chance do they have getting a high load factor when school is back in session. I hope that I am wrong, but so far, it looks like they may reduce some of the service. In the future, hopefully, they will consider other cities to provide service to - I'm thinking Las Vegas, Orlando, and New York. Even though Frontier already has service to Orlando, there could be room for much.

Hopefully it's just growing, startup pains. And I'd guess that's it's pretty difficult to start up during Covid, which is now getting a little worse with the Delta variant. We've had New Orleans in the past (can't remember which airline, but it wasn't that long ago) so it might not last. NASA's not really back into traveling yet, so there's that lost potential business (for Michoud). Don't know about the Army and other fed agencies. But NASA and presumably the Army pretty much have to stick with whatever airline they contract with for government rates. Heard the other day that HSV is back to about 70% of pre-Covid numbers after having been down over 95% for a while (along with many/most other airports), so there's still a lot of catching up to do.

Charleston is a great vacation spot, so it might morph into a seasonal route. They have a fairly busy small to mid-sized airport (about 5 million passengers in normal times) but I doubt we'd see much business travel there. I think Boeing has an airplane assembly plant there but we (Huntsville) don't deal with airplanes, just aerospace.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by MisterEd51

Has the requirement to wear a mask turned anyone off from flying? I wonder how much the slow restart for cruise lines has affected air travel. Hopefully if we can get past COVID-19 by next year thing will have returned to normal. It may be too much to expect that these new airlines will do well until that happens.

Yes, agree.

I don't mind the mask requirement, but a lot of people do ranging from logical reasons to just plain stubborness , but I'm sure it's hard to keep a mask on kids for long flights, or maybe any length of flight given how much time you have to spend in an airport prior to actual flying.