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CALGARY—Breeze Airways has reiterated interest in a larger, longer-range version of the Airbus A220-300 that would make its chosen fleet type even more flexible.
The ULCC is phasing out its Embraer E-Jets, the type it launched with in 2021, as its A220s are delivered. Its 39-aircraft fleet consists of 23 A220-300s alongside 10 E190s and six E195s, according to the Aviation Week Network Fleet Discovery database.
The figures include six aircraft that are either parked or being used infrequently—one A220 and five E-Jets. Breeze expects to have 32 A220s in its fleet by the end of 2024 and 90 by the end of 2028.
A move to another fleet type in the next decade would be “highly unlikely,” Breeze president Tom Doxey said during CAPA’s Airline Leader Summit in Calgary, making a flexible A220 family even more significant.
“A big part of what we’ve been doing is to standardize around just the A220,” he said. “Now we’re taking one-plus per month, and we’ve got deliveries for the next four or five years on that pace.”
Breeze’s near-term fleet plan focuses on those deliveries and retiring the rest of its E-Jets over the next year.
“Beyond that, if Airbus decides in the end—and there’s some complicating factors around this—to produce the larger version of the A220, the -500 or whatever you want to call it, I think that could be a really interesting airplane for us,” Doxey said.
The Salt Lake City-headquartered carrier, which just announced its first operating profit in March, sees opportunity for international expansion in its future. The ULCC in May 2023 applied to the U.S. Transportation Department (DOT) to start flights to Mexico.
“Say you might fly to a Tampa or a Charleston; it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say let’s fly another hour and a half to some really great destinations in the Caribbean,” Doxey noted. “You’ve probably heard [CEO] David Neeleman talk a little bit about Europe and there’s an opportunity for that. It’s probably a little further down the road but the close international really great vacation destinations could make a lot of sense.”
Breeze’s interest in a more capable A220 dates to before its launch. Carrier founder David Neeleman has repeatedly expressed interest in an aircraft that can fly the same routes as an A321LR—about 4,000 nm—and said at one point that Breeze’s A220-300s would have the capability. That would put some transatlantic flying in play for the carrier.
Airbus has bolstered the A220’s range, but it does not match the A321LR’s capability. Airbus has said that additional A220 variants are likely, but not until the program is both stable and profitable.
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