Breeze Airways adds new flights from RDU and switches up its California service
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- Breeze adds nonstop service from RDU to Bangor, Vero Beach, Stewart and Orange County.
- Breeze ends RDU–Los Angeles flights and shifts service to John Wayne twice weekly.
- Breeze will serve 35 RDU destinations in 2026, with no competition on 22 of those routes.
The fastest-growing airline at Raleigh-Durham International Airport plans to add nonstop flights to four more destinations next year and eliminate one.
Breeze Airways will begin flying nonstop to Bangor, Maine; Vero Beach, Florida; and New York Stewart International Airport in the Hudson River valley north of the city. The Bangor, Vero Beach and Stewart flights are scheduled to begin May 6 and operate on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The Bangor and Vero Beach flights will be seasonal through the summer, while Stewart will be year-around.
Breeze also plans to end its nonstop flights between RDU and Los Angeles. It will replace them with twice-weekly flights to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, about 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles.
Breeze began flying to Los Angeles from RDU in May 2023. It has competition from American and Delta, the two busiest airlines at RDU. Breeze plans to begin the Orange County flights on May 29 and continue through Aug. 17.
Breeze spokesman Ryne Williams said RDU officials urged the airline to serve Orange County, “so we’re excited to make the option available for our guests this summer.”
The low-cost carrier tends to choose routes not served by other airlines. It will be the only one to fly between RDU and Bangor, Stewart, Vero Beach and Orange County. Of the 35 destinations it will serve from RDU next year, Breeze will not have competition on 24 of them.
“Offering more unserved or underserved markets is part of the game plan for us,” Lukas Johnson, the airline’s chief commercial officer, said in an interview in September. “We feel like we’ve got the right model to do that, and the guest response has been really excited.”
Those 35 destinations are far more than any other carrier at RDU. Breeze has grown dramatically since debuting in the Triangle in February 2023 with eight flights a week to three cities. In March it will start its first international service from RDU, to Montego Bay, Jamaica, and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
A growing schedule has helped Breeze nearly double the number of passengers it serves at RDU this year, at 510,861 through October. That’s still a relatively small number, a little less than 4% of travelers who pass through the airport. That’s because Breeze serves primarily leisure travelers with less-than-daily service often to niche markets.
Still, the airline’s growth has helped give Triangle travelers more nonstop options that ever before. With the addition of four new flights from Breeze, airlines serve 85 nonstop destinations from RDU.
This story was originally published December 1, 2025 at 11:19 AM.
