Breeze Airways, Chairman & CEO, David Neeleman at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Americas 2026
Breeze Airways, Chairman & CEO, David Neeleman spoke to CAPA TV at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Americas 2026, hosted in Charleston, about latest industry trends and company developments.
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Transcript
David Neeleman:How's the revenue growth? It's looking really good. You know, it's— we couldn't have even imagined that we could come close to even covering the fuel increase, but we're actually doing that and some. You know, I think it's easier when you have lower base fares and you have to go up 20%. It's easier than if you're at a higher level. So Yeah, it's doing really well. And it's a combination of, obviously we've raised fares a little bit, but mainly it's the number of markets that we have that are maturing, that we've been in over 24 months. There's a natural maturity curve and it just, we've got a lot of markets in that category. So yeah, we're doing very well. About 80% of our 324 announced routes, we're the only airline that flies them. So that certainly helps a lot. And because we told our people, our guests, when we started the airline, we'll get you there twice as fast for half the price. And so people are really taking advantage of that. The good trend the last few days of oil going down, I think if we can get the fares back down a little bit to make sure that we aren't— it doesn't get worse. And so we don't have to go up. I think demand will be good. I think the economy is in really good shape. And it all depends on where fuel goes and where the fares are. But if they can stay at this level or come down a little bit, I'm not worried about demand in the second half of the year. Are they to 2,500? You know, it's for the markets that we fly to. We're not a high, high load factor airline. You know, even in our kind of our best days, we're still in the low 80s load factor-wise. And so those incremental seats don't mean as much to us as maybe a Delta flying between their hubs where they would need that extra capacity. So I guess it all depends on the price. The plane is because the, the way we understand it, the engines will be the same and the gross takeoff weight will be the same. So it won't have the same performance. And so it just depends on what the cost is for that. And we'll make that decision later.
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