Breeze Airways receives $250,000 incentive to return air service to Ogden

Cottonwood Heights-based Breeze Airways will begin service to the Ogden-Hinckley Airport in Ogden, thanks to an incentive recently approved by the Ogden City Council. In a recent meeting, the council voted 4-to-2 to provide a $250,000 incentive to Breeze to serve the airport. The incentive will help offset startup costs that the airline said could range from $800,000 to $1 million.

Breeze will initiate service to Ogden on Feb. 21 with four-times-a-week service to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California. Ogden will become the second Utah city served by Breeze. The airline currently has service from Provo to several western U.S. destinations.

Breeze will be the only airline serving Ogden after competitors Avelo Airlines and Allegiant Air left the market last year. Ogden is the 45th airport in Breeze’s network, and the airline will operate its Airbus A220 jetliners on the route.

“Ogden has a rich travel history having once served as a transfer point between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads,” Breeze President Tom Doxey said. “Today, Breeze is writing a new chapter for Ogden — one in which its residents get access to simple, affordable and convenient air travel to highly desirable destinations like Orange County.”

Breeze is also starting a new route from San Bernardino International Airport to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport. It is Breeze’s third route out of San Bernardino, another airport where it is the only airline. Flights will operate twice per week, on Thursdays and Sundays, seasonally from Feb. 15 through June 2 starting next year. The carrier also recently added Evansville, Indiana; Grand Junction, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; and others to its network. The announcement also comes a day after the first Breeze flight departed from Plattsburgh, New York for Orlando, Florida.

Many of these new airports, with the exceptions of Madison and Orlando, center on airports where there is no other scheduled air service. Many others, such as Evansville, have only minimal services.

Breeze founder David Neeleman called his airline “Allegiant better” since Allegiant, a major ultra-low-cost carrier in the U.S., also centers its business model on many smaller secondary airports away from city centers.

“These pockets of pain that are being created, because either there is no air service there, it’s gone away completely or it’s just regional planes going to hubs, has created hundreds and hundreds of market opportunities for us,” said Neeleman.

Meanwhile, Breeze is trying to become certified as a U.S. flag carrier to enable it to operate international routes. Such international destinations have proven lucrative for mainline carriers since the pandemic recovery, Neeleman said. Ireland is one potential destination for the carrier, as there is a lot of tourism and visiting-friends-and-family traffic between the two countries. Breeze particularly wants to take advantage of peak travel seasons.