It's Wednesday morning, 8 a.m., and people are lining up for their nonstop Breeze Airways flight to Portland, Maine.
That includes Tim Gato. He lives in Tampa, but is visiting family in his former hometown. A nonstop flight to Portland International Jetport, or PWM, is a new experience.
"The options are nice,” Gato said, “especially when you have competitive pricing involved as well. Time is money, so it's nice to have that direct flight."
And at Tampa International Airport, the low-cost airline is connecting people with underserved airports like PWM.
Victor Batini is the Breeze area manager at TPA. He said since the airline started flying three years ago, it's become very popular.
"We (Breeze) out of Tampa, I don't recall an aircraft leaving here on a 70% to 75% load factor,” Batini said. “It's full. Everything is full to the point that now we are looking at oversales."
Before Breeze came along, traveling to cities like Portland, Maine; Burlington, Vermont; or Madison, Wisconsin would require a stop in a hub like Charlotte, Philadelphia, or Chicago. It is generally more costly than a direct flight to a larger city like New York, Atlanta, or Los Angeles.
Lukas Johnson is the chief commercial officer of Breeze. He said the airline can offer cheap prices because of the planes they use, the Airbus A220.
"We've got what I call the 'Goldilocks' in terms of plane size,” Johnson said, “Our planes have 137 seats on them, so we're kind of right in that middle there. It allows us to deliver really efficient, great value, great experience flights to a lot of small and underserved spots."
Breeze has 24 nonstop routes into and out of TPA. It was also home to the airline’s first-ever flight.
Johnson said Tampa is a prime location for the company.
"There's a lot of demand for many different reasons to go to Tampa,” Johnson said. “You've got the beach just right down the way. You've got a lot of people who are expats and a lot of people who have moved or retired there. You might have a grandma or brothers or sisters or uncles."
Santiago Corrada is the CEO of Visit Tampa Bay. He said the area is seeing record tourism this year and airlines serving these smaller markets are contributing to that success.
"We have business people here that may want to do business in some of these secondary locations as well as people from there wanting to do business here,” Corrada said “It's a two-fold win, not only on the tourism side but it's also on the economic development side."
Debbie Fowler regularly takes a nonstop Avelo Airlines flight to Tampa for business from her hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina.
She calls it “the best flight ever.”
"I've been traveling for over 20 years,” Fowler said. “So now that I have direct access to a direct flight straight out of Wilmington, it's been absolutely amazing. I just wish that we had more days in the week that we had direct flights that we could take."
Avelo flies between TPA and Wilmington International on Sundays and Thursdays.
Josh Gillin is the senior manager of communications at TPA. He said, in addition to business fliers like Fowler, these airlines appeal to other travelers.
"What a lot of these airlines are doing now is trying to serve that post-pandemic 'revenge travel,' that 'I want to go places,'" Gillin said. "And some of these smaller destinations can be for people who want to visit family or they're trying to get to a part of the country that another airline doesn't serve."
That includes Megan Hollindsworth, who's flying to her old hometown of Wilmington, where her little sister is getting married soon.
"Before, I'd probably go like once or twice a year,” Hollindsworth said. “Now, I can go three to four times. It's a lot easier. It's been nice for everyone."
And as these airlines and their routes grow, the distance between the Tampa Bay area and the rest of the world can only get smaller.
Breeze announced in June it will add a non-stop to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in October. Flights to Halifax, Canada, through Porter Airlines, are coming in December.
