A week after a somewhat bumpy start, Breeze Airways said Thursday it was reducing service to Huntsville International Airport.
In a statement to AL.com, Breeze said it was eliminating half of its flights into and out of the state’s second-busiest airport.
The cutbacks will begin July 29.
“The decision to make these schedule changes is to minimize delays experienced with unpredictable summer weather and slower than expected fleet growth,” the airline said in a statement.
Breeze Airways began service in Huntsville on July 15. Even then, it got off to an inauspicious start. That inaugural flight arrived from Charleston, S.C., more than an hour late. The airline, in a goodwill gesture, said the waiting Huntsville passengers would be reimbursed for their flight.
Breeze began offering service to and from Charleston and New Orleans four days a week in Huntsville on July 15. Service to and from Tampa, Fla., begins today.
Service to those cities will go from four times a week to twice a week, the airline said. The flights will be on Thursdays and Sundays.
The airline said that passengers who were booked on the discontinued flights will be rebooked on other flights or receive a full refund of their fare.
The upstart airline, operating Embraer 190 regional jets with a capacity for 108 passengers, opened for business in May with flights between Charleston and Tampa. Since then, 14 other cities have been added to the airline’s inventory.
The founder of Breeze is David Neeleman, who started JetBlue among other airlines. Breeze touted itself as a “low fare, high flex” airline. The flex aspect means the airline can drop or add flights to a city depending on demand.
The Huntsville airport also has two other low-cost carriers — Frontier and Silver both operate flights to Orlando – as well as legacy airlines Delta, American and United. The airport features non-stop flights to a dozen cities across the country, including two airports in Washington.
In 2019, the last full year of operation before the COVID pandemic, the Huntsville airport saw more than 1.4 million passengers – its best year in at least a decade.
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