US start-up carrier Breeze Airways reports posting its first quarterly profit since launching in May 2021.
Salt Lake City-based Breeze said on 23 January that the milestone is partially attributable to holiday travel demand, which overcame the dampening effect of the recent US presidential election on bookings, in addition to the maturation of its brand and domestic network.
”In the last part of October and first part of November, we saw bookings start to trend down for a little bit,” Trent Porter, Breeze’s chief financial officer, told FlightGlobal on 22 January.
“Then, we saw it pick up in the back half of November and carry into December. What we were able to achieve actually exceeded what our models were projecting given the strength of what we saw in the fourth quarter.”
Breeze added about 30 new cities to its expanding network in 2024, increasing year-on-year passenger capacity as measured by available seat miles (ASMs) by more than 50%.
“In under four years, we have managed to grow and expand Breeze at an unprecedented rate while establishing a robust market in dozens of underserved markets across the US,” says chief executive David Neeleman.
The low-cost carrier says it generated more than $200 million of revenue during the October-December period, and $680 million of revenue in the full year – a nearly 80% increase over 2023.
Looking ahead, the first quarter is historically the year’s weakest three-month period for Breeze, thanks to its target market of leisure travellers. But it anticipates a strong second quarter – and a potentially profitable full year of 2025.
”Based on the metrics we’re seeing in the first quarter, we do believe that we’ve got the momentum and we’ve got the model to continue to see these profitability numbers,” Porter says.
Much depends on the extent of the passenger-capacity cuts being enacted by Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines and Spirit Airlines, all of which are right-sizing their networks it an attempt to find consistent profitability.
“If the capacity control that airlines are exercising right now – if that continues, yeah, we do project this to be a profitable year,” Porter says.
He acknowledges that Breeze, which prefers to identify routes with minimal competition, could enter certain markets as Frontier and Spirit withdraw, and make use of their smaller gauge Airbus A220-300s.
“We feel like we have the right gauge aircraft for certain markets,” he says. “They have A321s flying five, six times a week where it would really make sense to fly 137 seats two or three times a week.”
