- December 20, 2024
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This fall, Breeze Airways officially made Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW) one of its bases of operations.
Being a base of operations has positive implications for both planes and staff. It is also a big win for the Fort Myers airport, which is amid a $1 billion renovation project; served more than 10 million passengers in 2023; and is one of the top 50 U.S. airports for passenger traffic.
“Mainly it means we overnight aircraft at the airport so we can start daily service from that city in the morning,” Breeze's Chief Commercial Officer Lukas Johnson says in an email to the Business Observer. “But generally it also means we hire local flight attendants, pilots and technical/maintenance crews to work from there also.”
At first, the airline plans to keep three planes overnight at RSW and it could hire up to 200 staff, according to Johnson. While the majority of staff are hired locally, some team members do relocate, Johnson says.
Utah-based Breeze Airways designated RSW as a base of operations in October. The move to become more of a presence there comes amid rapid growth for Breeze Airways in Fort Myers. In October alone, Breeze added eight flights out of RSW, to places like Lansing, Michigan, and Bangor, Maine. The airline now offers a total of 26 destinations from the Fort Myers airport.
Founded in 2021, Breeze Airways aims to provide service between underserved cities, bypassing hubs to allow for shorter travel times.
Since offering its first flight at RSW in June 2022, the airline has accommodated more than 176,000 passengers one-way out of Fort Myers, Johnson says.
Breeze officials say the airline has grown rapidly at Fort Myers, doubling in size from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the fourth quarter 2023. Its growth is measured in available seat miles, or miles flown per seat from an airport.
The company plans to continue on its trajectory toward expansion, including by adding to its fleet, according to Johnson.
“Breeze is now three-and-a-half years old and we’ve grown already to 200+ nonstop routes between 66 cities across 30 states. But it’s still just the beginning,” Johnson says. “Today we operate 28 Airbus A220s but we have a total of 90 on firm order, which we take delivery of about one per month. So safe to say, we’ll have even more frequencies and destinations from Fort Myers in the years to come as we add more new cities and connect the dots between existing cities.”
