Breeze Airways: A New U.S. Airline Launching Today with Fares from $39 One-Way

The airline's first-ever flight is scheduled to operate on May 27—just in time for the travel rush of Memorial Day Weekend—from Charleston to Tampa, and on to Hartford, Connecticut. Additional routes will be added through July.

The upstart airline is the brainchild of David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue and prolific airline creator (Breeze Airways is the fifth air carrier he's launched; others include Brazil-based Azul and Canada's WestJet). Neeleman's business strategy for Breeze is to target smaller airports in cities overlooked by other carriers. “Breeze provides nonstop service between underserved routes across the U.S. at affordable fares,” he said in a statement on Friday. “A staggering 95 percent of Breeze routes currently have no airline serving them nonstop.”

Additional destinations include Providence; San Antonio; Pittsburgh; Akron; and Huntsville, Alabama, among others. This summer, the carrier's average flight length will be about two hours.