EnergyManager

The days of contracts taking years to hash out are gone, especially at the regionals or similar like Breeze. When you are at the bottom of the pile fighting for pilots, the market sets your contract, not negotiations. Just look at the pay increases at some regionals lately.

My money is on the government stepping in and reducing the barriers to entry (1500hr rule) before too many failures. They’ll probably also stretch retirement age as well while they are re-writing regulation.

fly4fun14

I'll cavet this by saying I don't work at Breeze but I was looking at them as a potential employer.

I don't agree with you but I don't disagree with you either. Looking at it objectively Breeze is arguably doing better than everyone thinks.

DN is using the same strategy he used with Azul in Brazil, with the primary difference being Breeze aircraft do not have the TVs but they do have entertainment via your own device like American and United. The other difference from Azul is the premium heavy cabins. From a strategic standpoint what Breeze is doing should be sound.

It also seems like the operational snafu that happened in May/June time frame has fixed itself since they had no cancellations in July and as far as I can tell didn't need Omni to do any flights. You could also argue that DN recognized the problems and fixed it by hiring a new president and new "chief of people".

From a new pilot perspective if you live in Richmond, Norfolk, New Orleans, Charleston, Hartford then really Breeze is your only option if you don't want to commute or drive multiple hours to make it to work.

For the Provo, Tampa, Providence bases they are obviously competing with Delta, JetBlue, Spirit when it comes to driving to work. If you look at FO Reserve guarantee, Breeze pilots make more or the same (including the $2000/month commuting stipend...without it they aren't competitive) as those airlines for the first 3 years. One would hope a TA would be out by then.

Additionally it's the only airline that has the mix of 1 to 4 day trips on the a220, home every night and charter ops. Depending on what you like, that can help with quality of life.

That being said the 401K matching is not close and they no longer have profit sharing.

It comes to seniority obviously Breeze would be the choice.

All that to say I could certainly see them sticking around, and I could certainly understand why somebody would or would not choose to go to Breeze, but to flat out say they are going to fail or that there is no reason to choose them isn't accurate.

fasteddie800

Honest question, what "strategy" are you referring to (beyond in-flight entertainment choices)?

As far as I've been able to tell, DN's success with Morris Air, WestJet, Azul, and JetBlue were a mix of being on the forefront of pursuing the LCC/ULCC model, and exporting that model from the US to other countries (Brazil, Canada). He had good timing with JetBlue, and pursuing routes that other carriers (AA) had abandoned.

I don't think any of those strategies are valid going forward. The LCC/ULCC model is well-worn at this point, and there are many competitors in that space.

What exactly does DN see as his advantage with Breeze?

bonvoyage

I would say JetBlue was more of a struggle of bad timing than anything, and they still managed to make it. The Breeze A220’s are nice, in a passengers eyes. The fares are cheap. Most of the routes are underserved, but they do plan routes that focus on tech or business travelers I.e. Providence, SDF-SFO, PVU-SFO. Time always tells, but in my opinion they seem to be doing well.

And we had no cancelations in July because we cut half of the flights. What you see all of the legacies doing right now for this fall, right sizing their ship, we have already done. Management at Breeze is playing “stupid games, stupid prizes”. If they continue to ignore the pilot market, they’re going to have trouble hiring and retaining.

Margaritaville

Cheap labor that eye waters at Shiny Jets.

mkitrn

DN is praying every night for age 67.

I was inverted

Niceness!!

hoover

I dont knowing this is true regarding regionals. I never worked for one but at majors it is taking years to hash one out without an end in sight.

01110011

That’s because the majors haven’t had to cancel flights because they don’t have enough applicants and because they’re seeing 5% attrition monthly. The regionals are in a world of pain, this is absolutely true. Even the greediest regionals are coming back to the table early so they can get enough fresh meat in the door.

fly4fun14

Serving underserved and secondary markets, which is the same model Azul used. Granted US is different than Brazil so by no means am I'm implicating success. More so arguing that 100% failure is not guaranteed.