COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS, Utah — As the federal government shutdown continues to disrupt air travel nationwide, Utah-based Breeze Airways is among the carriers feeling the impact — though at a much smaller scale.
Breeze, headquartered in Cottonwood Heights, operates flights across the country, including from two Utah airports — Provo and Ogden.
When determining which flights to scale back in compliance with federal guidelines, Breeze Chief Commercial Officer Lukas Johnson said minimizing traveler impact was the airline’s top priority.
MORE | Provo Airport set for expansion as Breeze Airways adds new flights to meet growing demand
“We absolutely prioritized minimizing the guest impact,” Johnson said. “We tried to give an advance warning — we know it’s very disruptive to guests’ travel plans. So we complied with the full seven days, all the way through next Friday, the 14th of November, and chose it based on options to re-accommodate guests on other flights to minimize the total number of guests impacted.”
According to Johnson, the reduction period is expected to bring minimal operational impacts for Breeze’s services out of Provo and Ogden. However, Breeze does operate out of some of the airports on the list, including Tampa, Orlando, Denver, and others.
The company says it anticipates some downstream effects, particularly from travelers seeking new flights after being disrupted at major airports on other airlines.
“Across our system, because we focus on more convenient, smaller hometown airports, we are seeing an uptick from some of the major airports,” Johnson said. “Guests valued, especially in a strained time like this, they value the ‘non-stop’, which we provide.”
So far, the airline reports canceling only two round-trip flights on Friday as part of its nationwide operations. A total of 32 round-trip flights are expected to be canceled across the Breeze system over the next eight days.
Despite the challenges, Breeze remains focused on keeping disruptions to a minimum as it works through the government-mandated reductions.
“It’s definitely painful as a business; your costs are pretty much fixed on this,” Johnson said. “You’re cancelling flights off, you’re cancelling revenue, you’re impacting guests, you’re hoping you take care of them so they come back, but it’s not an easy thing for any kind of business to deal with these disruptions.”
Johnson is asking all travelers to be patient with TSA and ATC, who are not being paid during the shutdown.
“They deserve as much compassion as anybody traveling and from that standpoint make sure you’re giving yourself some extra time if you are flying out of a major airport,” Johnson said. “Certainly, we hope you’d consider flying out of secondary that’s not going to have these issues.”
Breeze plans to add additional flights out of Provo to Las Vegas and Burbank starting in the next few months.
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