On December 30th, 2020, Breeze Airways took delivery of its first Embraer E190 aircraft. The jet will soon be joined by two more of the same type, as the start-up airline is getting ready to commence operations.
One of the most exciting and anticipated start-ups getting ready for its first flight in 2021 is David Neeleman’s Breeze Airways. The latest project of the founder of Azul Brazilian Airlines, Morris Air, WestJet, and, of course, JetBlue has garnered quite a bit of interest leading up to its launch and is predicted to become a success.
Meanwhile, all the enthusiasm in the world is no good for an airline without planes. However, just before the turn of the new year, Breeze Airways took delivery of its first Embraer E190 aircraft.
Neeleman alumni aircraft
The aircraft, now registered as N190BZ, was delivered to the carrier on December 30th. It is a 6.9 years old Embraer ERJ-195 leased from Elevate Captial Partners and was previously operated by Neeleman alumni Azul Brazilian Airlines under registration PR-AUB.
The jet has been stored at various locations, including Macon, Georgia, Roswell, New Mexico, and the Peru Grissom Air Reserve Base, Indiana, since being withdrawn from use in November 2019. Its final flight as PR-AUB took place on November 3rd when it returned to Macon from Peru Grissom.
Expecting arrivals from San Jose
Breeze Airways has previously agreed to sublease up to 30 Embraer E190 from Azul, although where the exact numbers will land is yet to be determined. At least another two E190s are on their way shortly. However, at least one of them is not from Azul.
They were recently spotted rolling out of the paintshop in San Jose, Costa Rica. While only one of the registrations is possible to make out, the aircraft currently designated N90NA comes from Nordic Aviation Capital. It is close to 14 years old and previously belonged to Air Canada, registered as C-FHNL. It has been stored in San Jose since September 2019.
.@BreezeAirways‘ first two @embraer E190s have been spotted @ San Jose, Costa Rica.
📸: denis_costa_rica_spotter (Instagram), Nacho Orozco Sanchez
N90NA & Nxxxx pic.twitter.com/1PYDEifiAQ
— BoardingPass (@BoardingPassRO) December 30, 2020
Launching in the midst of the worst crisis ever faced by commercial aviation, Breeze intends to use its expected fleet of Embraer aircraft to serve mostly a point-to-point network. Destinations are yet to be announced, but the airline has previously said it will start operations east of the Mississippi and focus on north-south leisure traffic.
E190 plus A220 a good post-pandemic combo?
While it is always exciting with a new player on the market, things will really start to become interesting as Breeze begins to take delivery of the 60 Airbus A220 it has on order. The first is set to arrive in 2021. With these two aircraft types well-suited to the predicted continued low levels of demand for some time, Breeze could have just the right combination to shake things up on the US domestic market in the years to come.