RDU’s fastest-growing airline adds another nonstop destination
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- Breeze Airways adds nonstop service from RDU to Ogdensburg starting Sept. 2.
- Carrier leads RDU with 29 nonstop routes, doubling passenger volume since 2024.
- Breeze targets international expansion, eyeing RDU for future global flights.
The fastest-growing airline at Raleigh-Durham International Airport is growing again, with new service to Upstate New York and the potential for its first international flights this winter.
Breeze Airways will begin flying between RDU and Ogdensburg, New York, on Sept. 2. The airline will fly the route Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays year round.
Ogdensburg is a city of less than 10,000 people in a rural area just south of the St. Lawrence River from Canada. Breeze’s flights to the city are subsidized by the federal government’s Essential Air Service program, which helps maintain connections to dozens of small airports nationwide.
But Ogdensburg is also about 60 miles from Ottawa, Canada’s capital with a metro population of about 1.5 million. Breeze, which already flies between Ogdensburg and Washington Dulles International Airport, expects some business from Canada on the RDU route, said Lukas Johnson, the chief commercial officer.
“There’s definitely a mixture of folks coming over the border, as well as people looking for service out of Upstate New York,” Johnson said in an interview.
Ogdensburg is as close as Breeze has to an international destination from RDU, but that may soon change. The airline expects to receive federal certification to fly internationally, Johnson said, and hopes to announce its first flights in coming weeks. He said RDU “is a great candidate” to get one or more.
Airlines now fly nonstop to 14 international destinations from RDU, including four in Canada, four in Europe and six in the Americas.
Business doubles at RDU in past year
Breeze made its debut in the Triangle in February 2023 with eight flights a week to three cities. It has grown dramatically since then.
Ogdensburg is the airline’s 29th nonstop destination from RDU, more than any other carrier. Through May, Breeze served twice as many RDU passengers as it did during the same period last year.
Johnson says the Triangle is a growing region with educated, well-off transplants and students who like to travel.
“It’s all of those elements that add up to a really robust local market,” he said.
For all its growth, Breeze remains relatively small at RDU, handling only a little more than 3% of passengers so far this year. The low-cost airline serves primarily leisure travelers with less-than-daily service often to niche markets.
It also uses smaller planes — mostly Airbus A220s that seat 137 people.
But Breeze expects to continue to grow at RDU as more people learn about the airline and the places it flies, Johnson said. The airline has not had to discontinue flights once it introduces them; it has canceled only one route from the Triangle, to Las Vegas, where it had competition from Delta and Southwest.
“We want to be sustainable, building it for the long-run,” he said.
