Breeze applies for certificate transfer, presents business plans

Breeze Airways, the start-up passenger carrier headed by serial aviation entrepreneur David Neeleman, has applied to acquire the certificate of now-defunct Compass Airlines, and published plans for its first year of operation. Breeze, which had originally been called “Moxy”, had intended to launch air transport services in 2020. The airline pushed back its plans to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing sharp drop in passenger demand across the air transport industry. It has also posponed until 2021 deliveries of Airbus A220s. In a filing with the DoT on 9 July, Compass and Breeze applied for the transfer to Breeze of the “certificate of public convenience and necessity issued to Compass… which authorises Compass to engage in interstate scheduled air transportation”. Within its first twelve months of operation, the Salt-Lake-City-headquartered budget airline says it hopes to connect up to 15 secondary, underserved cities in the central United States. The region is also idiomatically referred to as “flyover country”. On 7 February, Breeze submitted its own application for an operating certificate which, it says in this new filing, it will withdraw pending transfer of the Compass certificate. Breeze says in the filing it will begin operations in “mid-October 2020” out of the same location, and supervised by the same Flight Standards District Office of the FAA. But the public health crisis has upended some of the new airline’s plans, and stretched out its timeline, the filing says.<br/>