New Routes of the Day – Americas (15 July 2021): Breeze at New Orleans

On Thursday 15 July, new US carrier Breeze launched seven new routes from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (IATA code MSY) and the airport celebrated in style. The first Breeze flight to the Louisiana airport had actually taken place a whole week earlier from Charleston, while two more Breeze routes commenced on Friday 16 July. The following 10 destinations are now served using the airline’s E190s and E195s:

8 July: Charleston (CHS)

15 July: Akron/Canton (CAK), Fayetteville (XNA), Huntsville (HSV), Louisville (SDF), Norfolk (ORF), Oklahoma City (OKC), Richmond (RIC)

16 July: Columbus (CMH), Tulsa (TUL)

These routes are all served 4-weekly (Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays) apart from Akron/Canton and Columbus, which are both served 2-weekly. None of these routes are served by another carrier.

Breeze has 4% of New Orleans flights

With 36 weekly departures Breeze becomes the sixth busiest airline at New Orleans (with just over 4% of flights), well behind Southwest (33%), American (20%), Delta (14%), United (14%) and Spirit (10%). Pre-pandemic, New Orleans had welcomed some 13.64 million passengers in 2019, up 4% on 2018. In 2020, passenger numbers were down 61% to 5.29 million. The airport opened the state-of-the-art new North Terminal in November 2019, which was hailed by the city’s mayor as “the most transformative project for New Orleans since the Superdome”.