Of all the things that happened while I was on vacation, it was Breeze’s decision to roll into New Haven that caused more people to text me than anything else. (Good thing I had DND set on my phone….)
Since Avelo went into the market in 2021 and American walked away from its Philly flight, Avelo has dominated the airport on the central coast of Connecticut. The market has done so well that Avelo now serves more than two dozen destinations from the airport with some days having 15 departures.
The biggest surprise to me is that in the month of August, Avelo is the second largest airline in the entire state of Connecticut. According to Cirium data, it has about 16 percent of departing seats behind American’s 23 percent but ahead of Delta’s 15 percent. Perhaps that success made it inevitable that someone else would go into the market, though there are several theories out there about what exactly made Breeze jump now.
Was it Avelo’s decision to go into Hartford (albeit in non-competitive markets) that stoked the fire? After all, Breeze is going into serious head-to-head overlap here with Orlando, Fort Myers, and West Palm Beach all being huge Avelo markets that Breeze begins in December. (It also starts Vero Beach then, but nobody cares about that.)
Was it Breeze just being opportunitistic? The next tranche of routes are to the usual Breeze strongholds. In Feb, it’ll start Charleston (SC), Jacksonville, Norfolk, Raleigh/Durham, Richmond, and Sarasota. With those routes, it just looks like another spoke in the network.
Or was it something else?
As it turns out, it’s that last possibility that sounds more and more realistic, as we discussed on this week’s episode of The Air Show. It could have been an attempt to get ahead of a certain blue airline that has growing designs on New England.
Come have a listen as Brian, Jon, and I talk about what Chief Commercial Officer Lukas Johnson told Brian as we work through the possibilities.
Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Pocket Casts
Regardless of what motivated Breeze to actually make the move, it’s not a surprise that someone would have done it if they could. After all, the only other commercial airport in Connecticut with service is Hartford/Bradley which sits north of Hartford and away from the coast. There’s a lot of money on the coast, and most of those wallets people have to drive elsewhere. Thanks to New Haven, now they don’t.
But how exactly did Breeze get itself space in that tiny airport? After all, I was under the belief that Avelo swooped in and took all the terminal and ramp space, effectively blocking anyone else from entering until the new terminal got built in the future. I was wrong.
So, I decided to break this down. I took the Sunday before Christmas as a peak day to show aircraft movements at the airport. Then I added in the peak Sunday schedule for Breeze once it’s fully up and running in February. Here’s what it looks like.
HVN Peak Sunday Winter Movements
Purple is Avelo 737-800, turquoise is Avelo 737-700, powder blue is Breeze A220, black is aircraft overnight on ground
I’m well aware you can’t read detail here, but that’s sort of the point. I marked aircraft ground time for Avelo in purple for the 737-800s and turquoise for the 737-700s. Then I put Breeze flight times down below. The black on the sides is time when the airplane is sitting on the ground overnight, so it can probably be parked in a far corner and not cause issues.
Avelo has six airplanes that stay overnight, and it staggers their morning launch by half an hour all morning long. This is a sign that the terminal is just too tiny. If you look throughout the day, there are really only three crunchpoints for Avelo as it is now. There are two airplanes on the ground between 1p and 2p with another window between 4p and 5p and the final between 730p and 830p. Note that in all those cases, there is one 737-800 and one smaller 737-700. At no point is Avelo overlapping two of the bigger airplanes.
Then there’s Breeze which will park only one airplane overnight. The rest will just be airplanes that come in for a quick turn from a base elsewhere. And you’ll notice that Breeze does have an airplane in each of those three crunchpoints. That isn’t ideal.
To be clear, this doesn’t seem to be an issue of aircraft parking space. Take a look at this overhead shot of the ramp at New Haven:
You can see three airplanes parked on the ground in this photo already. There is one more spot with the blue stairs to the bottom left that is currently empty. Then there is another parking spot up top toward the right with white stairs. So there can be five airplanes loading at any given time at this airport.
The only time that might be an issue is late at night or early in the morning. They need to move airplanes out of the gate to make room for others, but that shouldn’t be that much of a problem. The real problem has to be that there’s just not much check-in counter or holdroom space.
Do keep in mind that I’m using an Avelo schedule from December since it doesn’t sell past the holiday period yet, and I’m using a Breeze schedule from later on once it starts all its flights. So maybe there will be more shifting around to smooth out demand, but otherwise, it might be best to steer clear of those times when three airplanes are all fighting each other.
My guess is that this is going to make things even tighter and more difficult for travelers at the airport. Then again, if it means they don’t have to drive to another airport far away, they probably don’t care. That’s what Breeze is betting, and it shouldn’t have to worry about anyone else coming into the airport anytime soon.
34 comments on “Breeze Squeezes into New Haven”
It just aint nothing but a breeze…
I’m just curious about the politics of it all. When Red Way had their brief and tiny existence at Lincoln Airport, the local politics was abuzz about who to credit and then eventually blame for it. I can only imagine being a small town politician who helped facilitate a New Haven hub in 2024 that has worked so well you now have competition…
Gonna be interesting to see how Avelo deals with direct competition at one of their “fortress” markets. And to be honest, I didn’t think Breeze would be the one to challenge them at HVN, but rather Delta in retaliation for XP starting ATL-HVN.
Very interesting podcast, glad everyone is back from their well-deserved breaks.
The podcast brings up some great points that were omitted from this blog post for the sake of clarity and scope, such as the fact that Breeze gets a lot of “guests” from Westchester County, NY (where HPN is located on the NY/CT border), and the fact that BDL (which is nearly on the MA border) isn’t convenient for those on the CT coast.
Have the additional flights at HVN been impacting HPN much, or is HPN constrained & expensive enough that the impact has been minimal? Also, I presume that there is less of a NIMBY anti-airport crowd in the area around HVN than HPN, given that there are so many multimillion dollar homes near HPN (which borders Greenwich, CT), while New Haven’s immediate surroundings are a little more blue collar.
HPN is slot constrained. Breeze would almost certainly want to massively expand there if they could – I think there is enough latent demand in the area for a significant base. But there are no slots available at viable times.
JSX was working around the slot restrictions by flying from the private terminal, but Westchester County sued and won: https://viewfromthewing.com/federal-judge-backs-westchester-nys-controversial-war-on-air-travel-can-kick-out-jsx/
Thanks.
I agree with your point about HPN having the demand to support a decent sized base (or focus city for a larger airline) if the constraints weren’t there. There are plenty of people with business & leisure travel budgets who live north of NYC and east of the Hudson. Despite its drawbacks, HPN is MUCH more convenient for those people than fighting traffic to get to LGA/EWR/JFK.
If they added a well-timed bus connection, HPN could actually be competitive with the other NYC airports for travel to Manhattan.
A Metro North express train from Grand Central to North White Plains takes ~45 minutes.
Driving from the North White Plains station to the HPN terminal takes ~15 minutes.
If you have a bus waiting at the stations to meet the arriving train then door-to-door time from Grand Central to HPN could be ~1 hour. On the return trip you’d likely need to build ~10 minutes of buffer into the bus schedule so that passengers don’t miss the train if there’s a bit of traffic, so return trip is probably ~1 hour 10 min.
That’s very similar to the travel times from Grand Central to JFK or EWR, and only slightly longer than travel time to LGA.
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, though – the bus would only make sense if there are more passengers, and the airport actively caps the number of passengers. Frustrating to see what could be possible with ownership that cared more about developing HPN as a regional asset.
All true – but how can HPN ever compete on destinations, frequencies, and likely cost with LGA/JFK/EWR? It doesn’t make sense for anyone going to/from NYC.
That type of setup would work if HPN could position as a LCC hub like STN, but it is not and has no desire to. SWF could be a better fit as the LCC hub, and it feels like that has been tried, but failed. I think, as a whole, there is just enough capacity & competition already at LGA/JFK/EWR to make SWF not work.
A few corrections.
The best MNR connection is White Plains as that is the transit hub. Express trains take 35 minutes not 45. At one time there was an express bus to HPN, but it was poorly advertised & hard to locate at either end & as a result it was canceled.
HPN is a very convenient airport if you live within shore driving distance….but otherwise it’s a mess of a small airport. Because expanding the terminal was constrained, the airport newly constructed new gates look like they we’re developed by a kid with an erector set…..There’s not a lot of seating……very little in the way of amenities, no airport clubs, etc… Coming from Manhattan and taking Metro-North to North White Plains would be more trouble then it’s worth….Makes a lot more sense to take an Express to LGA or JFK….
My main observations here:
– There is clearly excess demand for flights to and from NYC, due to the capacity controls applied to LGA, JFK, and EWR. If there weren’t excess demand, then slots wouldn’t be a binding constraint at those airports.
– There is also clearly excess demand at HPN specifically, because traffic at peak hours is already up to the airport’s half-hourly passenger cap and flight cap. If those caps weren’t in place HPN would already have more flights, even before considering transportation.
– With a smooth bus connection (similar to the Q70 SBS at LGA, but with less traffic to contend with), travel between Manhattan and HPN would be very similar to EWR, in both time and “hassle”.
HPN could absolutely grow significantly beyond its current passenger volume – the key issue is that Westchester County doesn’t want it to. That’s unlikely to change, but does seem like a missed opportunity.
SWF isn’t really comparable:
– It has a much weaker local catchment area. Westchester and Fairfield counties are dense and rich, while the area around Newburgh is very sparse.
– Transit options to New York are much worse – Beacon is a much longer train ride, with less frequent trains.
ISP is better than SWF (especially once they move the terminal around to the other side of the property to connect to the LIRR), but probably still too far away. It does decently well with local traffic to Long Island though.
Agree with most of your points, Alex.
I’d argue that even ignoring people coming to HPN from NYC proper, there’s plenty of demand for growth just from those living north of the Bronx, but I doubt we’ll see HPN will grow much (if ever) simply because it’s not allowed by the powers that be due to the complaints of those those living/working nearby.
Maybe I’m cynical, but I don’t think that the political power of those living around HPN can be understated… Lots of multimillion dollar homes and offices for the top 1%/0.1%/0.01% are located under & near the HPN flight paths (does a former first lady still have a home north of HPN?), and there’s only so much that noise abatement procedures can do.
Breeze certainly tried HPN and got close to nowhere due to slot limit. Their current flights to various points 1-2x weekly and seasonally just fails to boost confidence to book them in the event of IRROPS (which in my personal biased experience with them are like 80% times) Their attmept to do LAX and LAS were all so short lived. I took the LAX flight and saw how empty the flight is and can’t blame them for quitting.
When UA left HPN last year, did Breeze got that slot? Or did it went to other players? DL dropped HPN-BOS as well, but I assume DL used those slots for ATL etc.
HPN is indeed very convenient for folks in the surrounding area. The bus situation sucks like other mentioned.
The slot times they were working with just didn’t work. Their statement from when they cut the flights from the schedule was:
“We just made the difficult decision this week to suspend service between HPN and LAX, starting May 1. HPN is capacity controlled and has limited slot times. With the early morning slots we have, the route required 7 crews to operate it. Then, given the length of the flight, any delays were further impacted by crew duty times. Breeze keeps fares low through efficiency and by using our planes productively. Given that, we’ve decided to utilize that plane on other routes in the network.”
https://ishrionaviation.com/news/breeze-airways-suspend-westchester-los-angeles
It’s hard to make a station work if you have to schedule flights at arbitrary times of day. It creates ops headaches (as described above), and also make it harder to fill the flights since they are at off-peak times that are less convenient to typical travelers. For example, many of Breeze’s HPN departures seem to be between noon and 2 pm – my assumption is that they were able to get these slots because existing carriers didn’t want them due to low demand for mid-day travel. I routinely consider flying Breeze to HPN on trips to NYC, but it just doesn’t make sense because the flight times would kill a whole day of my trip.
I think an HPN base with good departure times would do great. An HPN base selling flights at quirky times – eh, most people will just drive to LGA for a flight at their preferred time, instead.
Two thoughts –
1. Breeze offers a different and more upscale product, so I expect they will appeal more to a different customer on the head to head routes.
2. To lessen the holding area pressure, especially in the morning for the launch, aircraft boarding can commence earlier if the plane is on the gate to use it as an extended hold room. They’ve done this at other airports before with some success. The challenge is the flight attendants have to be available to board early and that increases operating costs.
I haven’t flown Avelo for direct comparison, but my Breeze experience was really quite lovely. I’ll be back when the itinerary fits, and I’d love to give Ascent a whirl. I don’t know they do enough frequency most places to make it a good business travel choice, but the buy-up options on Breeze are good in my estimation. Great ride on the 220, for sure.
No point in holding passengers on the airplane. There is a noise curfew at HVN that restricts early takeoffs, but it was well-crafted to block exactly what you’re suggesting by also banning pushing back early and starting the APU early. By the time you can do those things, you can also go taxi out and take off. So there’s no restriction you can circumvent like this.
A trip report from New Haven may be needed
I’d read about a comparison between Pepe’s, Sally’s, and Modern.
As if competition from larger carriers doesn’t put a big enough question mark on these two carriers, their own competition against each other seems like a mission of self-destruction rather than two pretty small carriers each finding their own niche. I suspect the big boys are happy to just watch it all play out.
I’m reading a lot of this as Avelo actually having some sort of plan and Breeze just playing a combination of “follow the leader” and “throw darts at a dartboard.”
Vero Beach is an interesting choice, though – no competition at the airport, nearest airports being West Palm Beach (twice the distance) and Melbourne (all connections from the Northeast), and a relatively affluent area. This has possibilities.
Breeze Squeezes into New Haven. Well considering what happened last Sunday, it was a lot more than just a Breez
e.
What happened last Sunday or are you talking about the storms and flooding?
Yes, regarding the storms. Areas like Oxford received over 12″ of rain & the flooding was unbelievable. The Waterbury branch of Metro-North remains out of service indefinitely do to mudslides.
>It also starts Vero Beach then, but nobody cares about that.
The Vero Beach airport has very limited service at best, but it is the closest airport for residents of Indian River County (~160K population) and St Lucie County (city of Ft. Pierce and surrounding areas; ~330K population). The next closest airport to Vero is Melbourne, Florida which has Delta and American (and nearly all flights in/out of Melbourne require changing planes in Atlanta or Charlotte).
There is a potential market in Vero/Ft Pierce if airlines can find a way to serve it profitably. Interestingly, many residents of Vero and Fort Pierce choose to fly in/out of Orlando MCO (even though the West Palm airport is closer to Ft Pierce); a longer drive to the airport (for a direct/nonstop flight) is preferable to the huge hassle of changing planes in Atlanta or Charlotte that is required when flying from Melbourne. As well, Orlando has extensive international service (including Emirates), and more competition: more airlines, more direct flights, lower fares.
I live closer to the Melbourne, Florida airport than to Orlando MCO. I personally choose to fly in and out of MCO.
“Interestingly, many residents of Vero and Fort Pierce choose to fly in/out of Orlando MCO (even though the West Palm airport is closer to Ft Pierce)”
My cousin lives in St Lucie county and she’s told me that she and her husband prefer to fly out of MCO rather than PBI because the traffic going south is terrible compared to the traffic going north. It’s going to get really interesting when Brightline completes their station in Vero Beach.
They should just build a big heated tent until the permanent terminal is ready. Seems solvable. Bathrooms are tougher – you can use bathroom trailers but the operational cost is high and it’s not an ideal experience.
Tweed and Bradley really serve two different markets.
Most people who would use Tweed would be flying out of LGA instead. One problem with Tweed is that it’s in a residential neighborhood on the other side of the Q Bridge from the large population center in southwestern Connecticut. I flew out of this airport a few times in the mid 1990’s on United to ORD. The terminal was really small and there wasn’t even a baggage carousel.
Bradley is mostly for Hartford and its suburbs, Western Mass, and Southern Vermont.
I’m booked on the Breeze inaugural out of HVN.
I’ve flown in/out of the airport a number of times. Here is a selection of my photos I put together of the airport facility for another forum:
https://imgur.com/a/new-haven-ct-airport-hvn-us99G4C
Really great selection of photos! One update is that since you took these, HVN opened a bar upstairs in that little used mezzanine. I believe they’re going to start using that jetway gate for Breeze. The bar is a good addition but they must have lost a ton of seats by doing that.
To me it looks like only 3 ramp spots, the one to the upper right with the white stairs does’t have a crosswalk and there is a ground vehicle road through there. My guess that right spot is for maintenance/cleaning.
That photo isn’t current. The aircraft on the right is parked facing the building and that far space isn’t used usually for boarding. In my album above I think I have a photo that gets that.
There is room for 5 aircraft around the terminal. Anything else has to be parked across the runway.
They are restriping the HVN ramp in time for their plan to use 4 gates once Breeze starts. This means using the rarely used jet bridge from the small mezzanine. The issue IMO is since that jet bridge is from Departures, I can’t imagine their plan to use the jet bridge for an Arrival. Arrivals are in a separate building. Terminals will be overflowing at busy times or if delays.
You are correct. There are three gates. All currently use ramps to board and the jetway sits unused. There has been a reconfiguration since the Google Maps shot, and while there are still five parking spots, only three were ever usable as gates. My understanding is that there is a plan to make more of these spots usable as gates, which the reconfiguration made more possible, but that hasn’t actually been achieved yet. The sixth RON aircraft sits on Taxiway B; to me that schedule looks like Breeze will take up a gate spot overnight, and Avelo will RON a second aircraft out on B. What I’m curious about is who’s doing their ground servicing. Avelo hires their own personnel at HVN. Breeze would presumably prefer to use a contractor, but there isn’t one. It would probably be cheapest for them to pay Avelo, but I wonder if Avelo would actually agree to that.
Two losrr airlines who provide a total of one flight per week to the nation’s third-largest city…irrelevant in the extreme. They’re wannabes of an airline that promotes itself solely to Noo Yawk Yankers and Massholes. All three of them should die, painfully.