The addition of twice-weekly flights out of Huntsville International Airport to Orlando puts Breeze Airways in line for additional cash incentives from the city of Huntsville.

And David Neeleman, CEO of Breeze, said such incentives help make a difference in guiding future strategies for the company.

In June, the city council agreed to pay Breeze $10,000 a month to operate two flights a week to two destinations. Breeze covered those requirements with twice-weekly flights to Tampa and Las Vegas.

Related: Breeze Airways adds new routes in Huntsville for leisure travelers

Related: Huntsville willing to pay $10,000 a month to land low-cost airline service

With the addition of a third destination in March 2023 of twice-weekly flights to Orlando – which continue on to Charleston – Breeze will qualify to receive another $10,000 per month from the city, based on the memorandum of understanding approved by the council. The $20,000 monthly incentive payment is the maximum allowed under terms of the MOU and ends after two years.

Neeleman said earlier this week that commitments from local governments influence decision-making in his company. According to the resolution approved by the city council, Breeze asked for the incentives as a condition to operate in Huntsville.

“We have so many city councilors around the country that love having us in their cities,” Neeleman said. “And, obviously, if we have lower airport fees and we have maybe some marketing money, it just puts you at the front of the line of places that we want to fly out of. It makes it easier for us to make it viable. We really appreciate the support of the city council. And I think it’s important for a city like Huntsville to have, for the quality of life that people live there, to have convenient air service at a really affordable price.”

Neeleman, who founded JetBlue Airways, launched Breeze last year as a low-fare carrier and Huntsville was one of the early cities where it first operated. Breeze has now grown to fly to 36 locations across the country. Breeze has largely avoided operations out of large cities such as New York and Chicago that are dominated by legacy airlines while providing service to getaway locations for leisure travelers.

Neeleman said Breeze will be looking at providing service to additional cities in Huntsville, though the flights to Orlando and Las Vegas addressed the leading requests for travelers in the Rocket City.

Declining passenger traffic at the Huntsville airport is also something noticed by Breeze. In 2019 – the last full year before the COVID pandemic – Huntsville had more than 1.4 million passengers flying in and out of the airport.

Through August, Huntsville had 676,496 passengers flying in and out of the airport this year. That projects to just over 1 million customers for the year, which would be the lowest number of passengers – excluding 2020 and 2021 – since at least 2010.

Neeleman said he believed that because legacy airlines have reduced service to Huntsville, it’s resulted in the decline of passenger traffic. And some of those passengers are driving to airports in Nashville or Birmingham instead.

“During COVID, the airlines retired a lot of airline pilots,” Neeleman said. “There’s been a pilot shortage. And Huntsville really relied on regional airlines flying to hubs. And there’s probably 300 to 350 regional airplanes parked right now. So if you don’t have the planes, you can’t fly the flights. So they just go through and cut the service. And I think probably Huntsville has been affected by that service (reduction), which is amazing, because it’s a time when, economically, Huntsville is doing well. And the air service is going down. So that creates a really good opportunity for us. But also, you can see why the city council is concerned and wants to incentivize people to come and fly to the city because it’s important to have that service for a city.”