Breeze Airways CEO David Neeleman marks historic transcontinental flight

Breeze Airways created local aviation history on Wednesday, Nov. 2 when the first ever transcontinental flight to Los Angeles, a Breeze A220-300, took off from Westchester County Airport (HPN) at 8:30 a.m. with a nearly full load of passengers.

On hand for a media conference less than an hour before takeoff was one of those passengers, Breeze founder and CEO David Neeleman, the entrepreneur who founded JetBlue and Brazilian airline Azul.

In an “ask me anything” session exclusively with the Westmore News, Neeleman explained why Breeze cancelled its non-stop flight to Las Vegas only three weeks after starting it and why the originally promised flights from HPN to San Francisco and even Provo, Utah had been scrubbed.

“The issue with San Francisco and Vegas was a lack of trained crews, so we had to adjust,” he admitted. 

“As far as frequency goes, it’s a matter of slots here. So you can’t fly everywhere you want to fly.”

“We’re going to keep asking for more slots when they come up. Hopefully we can add more and more service. It was really important for me to add daily service to LAX (Los Angeles) because I knew it was a good market, and our bookings are fantastic. If we can get some more slots, we can add Vegas and San Francisco.”

Neeleman also acknowledged before a full media conference, in answer to a Westmore News question, that Breeze’s expansion was also being held up by a shortage of A220’s.

The revolutionary planes, which are designed to take off from regional and short runways and fly transcontinental and even trans-Atlantic distances, are built in Mobile, Ala. by Airbus, which bought Bombardier, the Canadian aircraft manufacturer which developed the plane in the first place.

When asked about the pace of delivery, Neeleman said: “It’s a little too slow. We had planned to get one a month, but because of supply chain issues they’re about three or four months delayed coming from the factory. The plan is to get one a month for the next 80 months. We have 80 on firm order. By the end of the year, we’ll just have 11, so we have a lot to go.”

Answering further questions about the extent to which Breeze could one day provide trans-Atlantic service from HPN with the A220, Neeleman said that since HPN does not have customs and immigration services, such flights could only go to locations like Ireland where the United States has its own customs and immigration services in place, allowing passengers to be cleared there as opposed to at a domestic airport.

Current Breeze service out of HPN

Neeleman said Breeze management has difficult decisions to make about where they fly, and how often.

“The big decision going forward: will we do fewer destinations with more frequency, or more destinations with fewer frequency, on a weekly basis? We kind of have to see how that goes,” he said.

Right now, out of HPN, Breeze offers the following, with the double-starred destinations being A220 service and the rest Embraer 190’s:

Nonstop Flights to:

• Charleston, SC**

• Jacksonville, FL

• Los Angeles, CA** (Daily, starting Nov. 2, from $109 one way)

• Nashville, TN

• Norfolk, VA

• Sarasota-Bradenton, FL (3x weekly, starting Nov. 2, from $74 one way)

• Savannah, GA

• Vero Beach, FL

BreezeThru Flights (one stop/no plane change) to:

• New Orleans, LA

Customer experience—how Breeze handles it

Breeze is a 21^st century technology airline in terms of customer booking and even canceling or changing flights (no charges for this on Breeze): everything is done on the internet via their website or phone app.

Neeleman was asked if “cutting the phone cord” to customers was a handicap in competing with airlines that have a phone reservations center.

“If there’s an issue, we call them (customers). But I think it’s so much more efficient because when there are long, long waits (on the telephone) at airline reservation centers, we can usually handle it and take care of people’s issues in less than 10 minutes.”

Neeleman sums up—he’s with Breeze for the long haul

Neeleman is known in the airline industry as a “serial entrepreneur”—having been involved with the birth of five airlines to date. Most notably, JetBlue and Brazil’s Azul.

Can Breeze count on his presence on an ongoing basis?

“I got kicked out of JetBlue,” he joked. But added: “Actually, I was the Chairman of the Board. But I really wanted to go to Brazil and do something in my home country. I’m still involved in Azul. I’m the Chairman and controlling shareholder, so that one I’m still there. The difference in JetBlue is I wasn’t the controlling shareholder. I am (controlling shareholder) everywhere else I’ve gone since then.”

For local air travelers, that means there’s one man to cheer Breeze’s performance and offerings and one man to blame.

The Breeze-David Neeleman-HPN story has more chapters ahead.