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Breeze Airways will add two more nonstop destinations from Raleigh-Durham International Airport next summer, including its second international route from the Triangle.
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Breeze will begin flying between RDU and Buffalo, New York, on June 29. The low-cost carrier expects to operate those flights year-round, starting Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.
The next day, June 30, Breeze will begin flying between RDU and Nassau in the Bahamas twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Those flights will be mostly year-round, with a pause during hurricane season.
The airline will be the only one flying nonstop from RDU to the Bahamas, after BahamasAir discontinued its service to Freeport, Grand Bahama, in 2024. In 2025, Avelo Airlines announced flights to Nassau on Boeing 737s but canceled the route before service began because of poor sales.
Breeze will succeed in part because it uses smaller planes, the Airbus A220-300 that seats 137 passengers, that the airline can fill and fly profitably, says Lukas Johnson, the chief commercial officer. Breeze has also established a track record in the Triangle, Johnson said, flying to more destinations from RDU than any other airline.
“I think we’ve got the right product — plane, efficiency and presence,” he said in an interview. “This will be our 43rd destination out of Raleigh by next summer, which is tremendous. So I think you’ve got a growing local presence there that will support a new route out of the gates.”
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Buffalo fits with the airline’s strategy of serving smaller markets, particularly in the Northeast. Buffalo will be the airline’s 16th nonstop destination from RDU to cities and suburbs in New York and New England.
Johnson said the airline expects people with family and friends in western New York will help fill planes on that route.
Breeze has been the fastest-growing airline at RDU the last couple of years. Through August, it had carried nearly 780,000 passengers in and out of the Triangle this year, more than double the same period last year.
The airline’s first international route from RDU was Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, which it began flying two days a week in March. Breeze had expected to begin flying twice a week to Montego Bay, Jamaica, that same month but postponed that service as the island worked to recover from Hurricane Melissa last October.
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