Breeze Attacks Avelo's New Haven Hub

Another confounding move by an airline who's yet to make a cent, nor establish a sustained route network that actually gets them market recognition. Now they want to get into a turf war? So strange.

HVN better enjoy all the volume and low fares, while it can. This won't last.

Seems like this can't support 2 airlines. So it will be low, low fares all around and then one if not both airlines will eventually give up and move on.

As a Connecticut resident, I don't understand the comment that the New Haven airport can't support 2 carriers. Why not? Reality is that most residents of the area try their best to avoid LGA, JFK and EWR so the options really are BDL and HPN. HPN is always busy and I am pretty sure at max capacity unless they expand and locals keep fighting that. BDL is a good option for people north of Fairfield County but most that live in southern CT bite the bullet and go to NY/NJ to fly. New Haven is a good option and central in CT so I think it can definitely sustain two airlines....especially if the routes don't overlap too much. Do I think Breeze is smart going head to head on some of the same routes as Avelo...NO but there are people that won't fly Avelo so Breeze might be banking on them for those overlapping routes.

Now they’ll both go bust. Dumb move.

Connecticut is an interesting state. Fairfield County has always been wealthy but has gained a lot of older millennial families the past few years as they and moved out of NYC for houses. Areas like Hartford have their state government and insurance niches. New Haven itself obviously has education and related stuff. It’s not a state that is high on the radar, but there are a lot of residents with money that want to travel. HVN is 40-45 minutes away from a lot of the population in Fairfield County, and obviously closer to a lot of people in New Haven and Litchfield counties. And a lot of these residents probably have friends, family, second houses in Florida. It’s a well located airport for these kinds of flights. Whether Breeze will be successful here is a different story, but no reason HVN airport can’t sustain a lot of flights given the recent demographic trends.

I just looked - it looks like Avelo itself is launching an expansion at Bradley starting in November, so this could just be some retaliation on Breeze’s part…

HVN is set to handle literally 10 times more traffic this year than it did the last full year pre-Covid.

The implication is that it is unlikely to sustain long-term, all of the traffic being added by (a turf war between) two startup airlines, within such a short time.

Also keep in mind that Westchester County Airport (HPN) will have a lot of overlapping travelers in its catchment area as New Haven, particularly the wealthy Fairfield County. The major towns in Fairfield County are <20 mins from HPN.

Breeze and JetBlue are also both very active at HPN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westchester_County_Airport

Wonder if Breeze will move some of their flights from Westchester to New Haven or keep them both if demand warrants

Add New Orleans to the competition list. Avelo just today announced HVN-MSY, 2x weekly starting 11/14/24.

As someone who lives in Westchester and is 30 minutes from Greenwich, I agree. Like I can avoid LaGuardia or jfk and take a smaller airport like hpn or New Haven, i would gladly take even if it’s more expensive.

I don't get this move at all especially considering by all accounts Breeze is hemorrhaging money. Eliminating Avelo from the market would benefit them, but I just don't see them as strong enough to make that kind of move. When Breeze first launched if memory serves me, they were planning to have a large presence in HVN, but pulled back and focused more on BLD and PVD because of Avelo launching with HVN as its hub. Breeze already serves all nearest commercial airports to HVN (BLD, PVD, SWF, and HPN).

I still do not understand Breeze. I live in one of its focus cites. The non-stop flights are to towns I’m not interested in. It also lists a service to LAX, but with a 5 hr connection; total travel time is 13+ hrs. And frequency is only twice a week.
Very few, if any, in town are aware it serves our airport. Very little awareness other than an occasional blurb in the local paper which only old folks like me read. Haven’t heard anything from my nieces and nephews who are the essence of social media
How it makes money is beyond me!!

Because while it seems like a no brainer to you and I, history tells us it rarely works

Frontier has been trying to make TTN (Trenton-Princeton) work for years now. Can pull traffic from both EWR and PHL, and have lots of wealthy locals similar to New Haven. Yet they’re pulling back a ton this winter. I don’t know why, flights were always full when I flew there. My best guess is that while tons of locals love these smaller airport flights to FL, those on the other end aren’t nearly as interested

That's what I'm afraid of. When Avelo opened at BDL, it was because they needed a place for International flights. They avoided most head to head competition with Breeze.

There is barely any room to operate now inside the terminal. Avelo has worked hard at building an on time operation at HVN, which is now threatened by having to find room for Breeze and all their passengers.

I don't understand why the attack on a fellow LCC, they could have announced a similar move at several focus cities a major serves.

This is such an odd move for the airline. Personally, I will take full advantage of this service for my favorite New Haven style pizza "Apizza"