Earlier this week, Avelo announced that it would be fully abandoning its West Coast network. With the airline packing up and heading east, the question was thick in the air… would anyone bother to step in?

The answer is yes. There is a Breeze a-blowin’.

Avelo’s West Coast experiment never quite worked, but it wasn’t for lack of trying different things. Burbank was the airline’s first base when it launched in 2021, and it’s been a rocky road ever since with all sorts of changes. Here’s a snapshot to give you an idea.

Avelo West Coast Total Flights and Destinations by Base

^{Data via Cirium}

I know I say this is by “base” but Palm Springs never was a base. It was just a spoke that had flights to other spokes. But anyway, you can see some of the madness here. When Avelo started, it went with higher frequency from Burbank to a variety of West Coast cities. It quickly backtracked on frequency and went less-than-daily as a default. And then, the route changes began.

By the end of the first summer, Phoenix/Mesa, Bozeman, and Grand Junction were out. Fort Collins was in, and so was Tucson for all of nine flights before it was canceled. Other routes like St George and Monterey were so bad they never even started. Fort Collins and Ogden were gone before the next summer, but Boise came in. In summer of 2023, the airline went into Brownsville, Colorado Springs, Kalispell, and back into Bozeman. Salem joined in the fall. Within a year, those were all gone except for Kalispell which limped along as a seasonal service. There was a brief attempt at flying to Las Vegas that fizzled fast, and then the cuts set in. Other bases had much shorter lifespans.

In the fall of 2023, Avelo decided to open a Las Vegas base. It had already dabbled in flying Burbank-based aircraft through Eureka, Fort Collins, Redding, and Santa Rosa on to Vegas, but it wanted to put an airplane in Vegas to do more. Santa Rosa never stopped, but fall of 2023 brought Dubuque, Brownsville, Redmond/Bend, and Salem flights in addition to the return of Eureka. Most of those lasted just a few months, and Avelo pivoted again.

By February 2024, it had decided to move its Las Vegas base up to Santa Rosa where it had seem some mild success with flights to Burbank, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Redmond/Bend. Starting in summer 2024, it added Boise, Kalispell, Ontario, Pasco (for 12 flights), Salem, and Salt Lake City from Santa Rosa. Things went poorly enough that earlier this year in 2025, Avelo decided to shut its Santa Rosa base and move those airplanes to Phoenix where it could operate ICE charters flying migrants on behalf of the feds.

That left us with Burbank as the sole aircraft base in the west. This month, the network is a shell of its former self:

^{Data via Cirium}

Burbank to Santa Rosa is still 6x weekly, but the rest are either 2x or 4x weekly. The wind-down begins in August when Salem serves ends on August 10 with Santa Rosa and Las Vegas shutting on the 11th. Kalispell goes away August 30, and that leaves five cities from Burbank to run until the bitter end in December: Eugene, Eureka, Medford, Pasco, and Redmond/Bend. The final flight is December 2.

Apparently, Breeze looked at this wind-down plan and said, “huh, I guess those final five must be the best routes left. Maybe we should try to fly four of them? Oh and added bonus, we get to kick Avelo while its down.” And so they will. It feels a little dirty to me, especially after Breeze went into New Haven too, but hey, such is life.

This morning, Breeze announced it will go into Burbank with flights to all but Medford. It’ll also add Provo which is its preferred outpost close to home and where the aircraft will be based that fly these routes. Flights don’t begin until next March after the long, thin winter season.

Breeze will come in with less capacity all around. Avelo had Eureka and Redmond/Bend each at 4x weekly but Breeze will cut that to 3x and 2x weekly respectively. Eugene was at 3x weekly and will drop to 2x with Breeze. Pasco stays flat at 2x weekly. Provo, on the other hand, will come in hot with 5x weekly. Why? That’s how Breeze will flow airplanes into Burbank to do the new flying. On the two days that doesn’t fly — Mondays and Fridays — the airplane will fly Provo to Las Vegas and on to Redmond/Bend.

So the question is… why, Breeze, why? I mean, other than sticking a thumb in Avelo’s eye, is this really worth doing? I spoke with Chief Commercial Officer Lukas Johnson to get a better understanding of the rationale. He explained that this was an opportunistic move since the markets will suddenly be unserved, and these markets that Breeze picks up look to be Avelo’s best. So why can Breeze make it work when Avelo can’t?

Not a Base

Avelo is an airline that has really been running two airlines. Other than a brief time when Brownsville had service from both Burbank and Orlando and I think Dubuque had Las Vegas and Orlando, Avelo’s east and west haven’t been connected. That meant Avelo had to base aircraft and crews and all that kind of infrastructure. Breeze will be flowing all of this from its already-existing Provo base. One flight a day will fly to Burbank (5x weekly) or Las Vegas (2x weekly) and then go on to the other four cities. Two days a week they come back to Burbank and then do another turn before going back to Provo. The other days, they head straight back. It’s a much lighter touch with less asset dedication to make this work.

The Product

Avelo has an all-coach product with limited upsell opportunity. Yes, in September it is rolling out extra legroom and a blocked middle seat option, but that would appear to be too late. Breeze only has 80 standard seats with 45 extra legroom and 12 First Class. It also has wifi onboard and limited catering. Lukas thinks that the product will be well-received in Burbank and should help boost revenue over what Avelo could generate.

Gauge

In November 2022, Avelo had fully transitioned from its larger B737-800s with 189 seats down to the B737-700 with 147 seats in Burbank. Breeze will fly 10 fewer seats at 137 on its A220s. Only 10 seats, does that matter? It does.

Lukas confirmed that it views these as the best markets for Avelo, so I decided to pull some numbers. If we look at the 12 months ending April 2025, these four markets from Burbank all filled 80 to 83 percent of seats. It’s higher than that during the summer months. With 10 fewer seats, that means it can run a solid load during off-peak times but it will be able to squeeze higher revenue when flights are full. Yes it’s only 10 seats, but that can help to juice fares.

If we look at fares in Q2 2024 to get an approximation of summer, they ranged from $79 to $83. In the off-peak Q1 of this year, the most recent data available, Pasco was at $71, Eureka at $74, Redmond/Bend at $80, and Eugene at $94. These were some of the best in the West Coast system for Avelo. It is notable that the only one of the remaining destinations that Breeze won’t pick up, Medford, had a much lower $59 fare in Q1.

It’s not a great look for Avelo to walk away from markets that Breeze thinks can work, but you can understand why that would happen thanks to the structural differences between the two airlines. Avelo will now try to save itself by focusing on its East Coast network, and Breeze, well, Breeze will just keep expanding into markets nobody else wants to fly.