Breeze adds 35 routes and 10 new cities, brings Airbus A220 flights to West Coast

Breeze Airways, the nearly year-old startup by JetBlue founder David Neeleman, announced a major expansion on Tuesday, featuring 10 new cities and 35 new routes.

The expansion also sees the formal introduction of the airline's new Airbus A220-300 fleet, though the carrier plans an earlier soft launch of the plane with crew familiarization flights on existing routes.

With the expansion, Breeze will fly 77 routes between 28 cities.

New cities on the map

The expansion marks Breeze's first steps over to the West coast, with routes added from San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Bernardino in California, as well as Las Vegas. Breeze will be the only scheduled commercial airline operating out of San Bernardino.

Additionally, the airline will add service to six new markets on the Eastern seaboard and the Southeast. Three of those markets are in Florida: Jacksonville, Fort Myers and Sarasota/Bradenton. The other new cities are Nashville; Savannah, Georgia; and Syracuse, New York.

Breeze's new fleet

With the exception of one route — San Francisco-San Bernadino — all of the West Coast routes will be serviced by the A220.

Breeze initially launched with a fleet of leased Embraer E-190 and E-195 jets, which the airline has used to fly short routes — under two hours of flying time — between smaller and midsized markets that lacked direct air service connections.

Airline founder Neeleman has said the airline will continue to use the Embraers on shorter routes as it takes delivery of the new A220s, but that it would use the latter for mostly for what it termed "long-haul" domestic.

The A220-300, which has a range of 3,900 miles, according to Airbus, would enable any routing within the continental United States. The airline has also said it plans to offer international destinations using the A220 at some point in the future.

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Breeze took delivery of its first A220 in the fall, and expects to take delivery of one new aircraft per month for at least the next six years. The airline has ordered a total of 80 A220-300s, with options for up to 40 more.

The first deliveries, which will enter into service in the coming months, feature 126 seats, including 36 "Nicest" first-class seats, 10 extra-legroom "Nicer" seats and 80 standard economy seats. In a statement, Breeze said that later deliveries will be configured with 137 seats, consisting of 12 first-class recliners, 45 extra-legroom seats, and 80 standard economy seats.

The A220 fleet is also outfitted with new in-flight connectivity and entertainment.

Each seat has a power outlet and USB-C port, and Wi-Fi provided by Viasat will be available. Streaming movies and TV shows will also be available for passengers to watch on their own devices, Breeze said.

Read more: Neeleman's new airline Breeze will use a 'see how it goes' approach to succeed. And business class — eventually

While the entire A220 fleet will eventually have the Viasat connectivity and streaming, the service won't be available until October, according to Breeze.

The airline does not plan to add similar connectivity options to its Embraer fleet, chief operating officer Lukas Johnson told TPG by phone on Monday.

"The Embraer fleet is flying an hour, hour-and-a-half flights," he said, suggesting that connectivity on those routes was less crucial. "Until the airline gets more established, it's not something we're looking at."

New routes in a growing network

Breeze's inaugural long-haul A220 flight will be on May 25 from San Francisco to Richmond, although the airline will have already put the planes temporarily on some shorter routes in May in order to help familiarize crew members with the new plane ahead of its transcontinental debut.

Johnson noted the airline decided in the days ahead of the announcement to reduce frequencies on some of the new routes due to surging fuel costs.

"Removing some of the Tuesday and Wednesday frequencies, things that are historically lower demand days to fit in — (is) what we think is a safer route announcement given oil prices," he said.

Here's a full list of the new routes, including both the new cities and existing markets within Breeze's network:

From Jacksonville

From Las Vegas

From Savannah

From San Francisco

From Los Angeles

From Nashville

From Syracuse

From Fort Myers

From Sarasota/Bradenton

From San Bernardino

Other new routes between existing cities include:

From Hartford

From Richmond

From Providence

From Columbus

From Akron/Canton