Breeze Adds Basic Economy

But its chief commercial officer says it has little to do with the competition. Plus, the airline has launched a co-brand credit card.

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Dear readers,

When I learned that Breeze Airways is adding basic economy, I asked chief commercial officer Lukas Johnson whether I should view this as a response to Spirit, which launched six routes last year from Charleston, Norfolk and Richmond, all competing with Breeze.

He laughed.

"Oh, I don't think we need that to compete with them," Johnson said, before quoting some data from memory.¹ "Check those six markets that Spirit entered against us head-to-head, in November and December. They have the lowest load factor of any market month out of 38,000 city pairs for the last year. They had a 13 percent load factor in November on Norfolk to Fort Myers.”

"People don't want to fly them, Brian."

We love honesty at The Airline Observer. But if Spirit (or Frontier) isn't the reason Breeze now has a no-frills base fare, why did the airline adopt it? And what's the deal with this credit card, which Breeze is introducing less than three years after its first flight? Johnson reminded me that his former employer, Allegiant, got its first credit card in 2016 — almost two decades into its journey, because conventional wisdom suggests an airline needs a certain size and scale before consumers will want its co-brand card.

Read on for the reasoning that Johnson, CFO Trent Porter, and vice president of marketing Angela Vargo shared with me in a joint interview about why they’re adding basic economy, and why they are in such a rush to introduce a co-brand credit card.