While most major airlines will get a lot of spring and summer business from North Americans going on European getaways, the cycle eventually shifts toward sun-seeker routes.
Over the last two months, American Airlines (AAL) added new routes to destinations like St. Lucia, St. Maarten, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines while competitors such as JetBlue Airways (JBLU) and Southwest (LUV) had been setting their sights on Nassau in the Bahamas. Delta Air Lines (DAL) bounced in soon after with additional routes to Aruba, St. Maarten and Mazatlán.
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On the low-cost end, Breeze Airways just announced a series of new routes to Florida hotspots such as Sarasota, Orlando and Daytona Beach.
The new flights include one between New York’s Westchester and Sarasota launching on Oct. 31, another between Erie, Penn. and Orlando launching on Nov. 6 and another between Indiana’s South Bend launching on Nov. 7. A new route to Orlando from Newark will also start running on Nov. 7.
‘Fly affordably and comfortably to over 60 destinations’
All the announced routes are seasonal and will be dropped at the end of 2024 for re-evaluation. Other announced routes include Westchester to Daytona Beach and flights to Sarasota from Ohio’s Akron-Canton, Maine’s Portland, New York’s Islip and North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham.
The focus on the New York area is in line with Breeze’s strategy of reaching customers in smaller cities and underserved airports (in this case, serving those who live outside NYC and do not want to drive to JFK or Newark).
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“With the addition of Newark, Breeze now serves four New York City area airports while continuing to expand our footprint across the U.S.,” Breeze Founder and CEO David Neeleman said in a statement to Travel + Leisure magazine. “By connecting the dots between underserved city pairs, we are giving travelers more options than ever to fly affordably and comfortably to over 60 destinations across 30 states on more than 200 nonstop flights.”
The latest flight to launch, between Syracuse and Sarasota beginning on Nov. 22, will run for only a month before being cut from the winter season. All of these flights will run twice a week according to a schedule that tracks when demand is highest from a given city.
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These are some of the other Breeze flights to launch in 2025
At the same time, flights between Fort Myers and South Bend, Daytona Beach and Hartford, Hartford and Wilmington to Orlando and Providence to Daytona Beach will all launch in February and replace what was cut.
While the airline has not announced routes to any new cities, the new flights connect more destinations to which Breeze already flew — in particular, more smaller cities to popular Florida vacation destinations.
To promote the new routes, Breeze is offering a sale on round-trip tickets booked through it website. Those who use the promo code “TRIPLE” to buy fares between now and 11:59 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 9 Pacific Time for travel between Aug. 28 to Feb. 4, 2025 or April 28 to March 13, 2025, with certain blackouts during the holidays and popular weekends, will get 35% off the flight fare.
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