00:00 Speaker A

As policy uncertainty rattles consumer confidence, more Americans are choosing to road trip rather than to fly in order to save a little money. For Memorial Day, the number of people who decided to drive rose to the highest level in 20 years, 39.4 million, according to Triple A. We want to get the inside scoop on flying demand with David Neeleman, who is the founder and CEO of Breeze Airways. Great to have you here with us. What are you seeing in travel demand right now for people who still want to take to the skies for summer and what the bookings look like for Breeze?

01:02 David Neeleman

They look good. Uh we're we're pleasantly surprised. We've had record booking days uh this month. You know, we we try and fly in markets we can't drive. Uh if if it's more than a kind of a if it's less than a six-hour drive, we usually don't fly those flights. We like to be six plus hours. And we we also like to be doing nonstop in the market. So what we find is that we we just generate more traffic if we can get you there twice as fast for half the price. People may maybe get a a second home in Vero Beach which which where the only airline that flies there or if you're in uh Huntsville, Alabama and you want to go to Vegas, you don't have to connect over you know, one of the hubs or you want to hop down to Orlando, maybe you go four times a year instead of just once. So, you know, that that convenience and that the value proposition uh creates just a lot of demand. You know, we're we're in 72 different cities and we have over almost 300 routes, 200 flights a day. So we're we're getting we're getting big, 31 states and people are loving what they are seeing with Breeze.

03:31 Speaker A

And on the pricing mechanisms, how have you been able to make sure that you're still at a price point that even with those non-stop flights that are highly attractive to a lot of flyers out there, that you're still maintaining your own margin basis that your business has come to expect?

04:16 David Neeleman

You know, we have a really premium product and people people love it. Our NPS scores are off the charts, the highest I've ever been seeing in an airline that I found and this is my fifth. What we do is we we have it we say, look, 49 bucks, you want to go for that? You want to bring a backpack on. That's great. But if you want to pay us another 50 bucks, uh we'll throw in a carry-on, a check bag. Uh we'll give you free Wi-Fi. We'll get you a couple of extra inches of leg room. And then if you want to go first class, you know, you can do that as well and our first class cabin usually sells out quicker than anything else. So it's a premium product and it's easy to understand. People don't feel like they're getting nickel and dimed. They know what the proposition is from the beginning. If you're on a real tight budget, um that's great or if you want to splurge a little bit, that's great. We'll take care of everybody.

05:46 Speaker A

And it's so interesting because when you talk about some of the add-ons, that's typically where the mindset previously would go for a lot of consumers and feeling like they were getting nickel and dimed and having to pay for just being able to take a bag with them or to be able to check a bag. So how are you seeing the mindset among travelers in terms of what they want to spend more into versus where they're saying, okay, this is where my cutoff point is. How are you seeing that mindset change now as many of the airline operators, especially the Big three, Big four are starting to charge more for premium?

06:49 David Neeleman

Yeah, you know, I think it's just different strokes for different folks. And what we find that's interesting is that uh maybe on some of the ULCCs where people just feel like they got fleeced. You know, you may get a ticket for 70 bucks, but you check your bag is 75 and the second bag's 75 and next thing you know, you bought a fair for 70 but you're paying 150 just for your bags. That that makes people mad and they don't want to come back and fly that fly those carriers again. So we just we're really upfront from the very beginning. Um you know, do you want in uh you know, Southwest case they start charging for bags and people are mad about that. But we just say here's our fair if you want everything included. Here's our fair if you want to you know, go on a budget. So it just depends. It's uh you know, people what we find and this is really interesting, when people fly us the second and third time, they actually spend more. They up their bundles because they walk by that first class seat and say, wow, I I could have got first class for another 100 bucks. I'm going to do that next time or I'm going to get in this extra leg room seat and get free Wi-Fi. So instead of figuring out how to how to game the system, they actually buy up because they they think it's really a fair proposition.