NoCo To D.C. Flights
Last Friday, 13 people shuffled up a ramp onto a baby-blue Breeze Airways Airbus A220-300, a plane about the length of two high school basketball courts that seats 138 passengers. The flight they are boarding is part of Breeze Airway’s new Ogdensburg to Washington D.C. route that debuted October 1.
St. Lawrence University students Patrick Chase ’25 and Benjamin Roach ’25 were among them. They are headed to the nation’s capital for some monument sightseeing. Chase said it was one of the best flights he has ever been on. “I think it helped that there were only like 12 people on board,” said Chase. “Things went a lot faster than other flights.”
Roach said he was pleased with the overall experience and cited that he paid $88 for the round-trip flight. “Whether you’re looking for affordability, convenience, or just a great flight experience in general, Breeze is the way to go,” said Roach.
Li’i Issacs was one of the flight attendants on Chase and Roach’s flight. He said while this flight is small, it isn’t the smallest he has ever served. “Actually, the smallest fight that I’ve had was when we did this first trip two days ago. We only had two people on our plane,” said Issacs. “I’ve never had a crew that outnumbered the passengers.”
Despite how full, or rather unfull it is, this plane is taking off no matter what. The U.S. Department of Transportation subsidizes this once-daily flight as part of the Essential Air Service. The EAS was established in 1978 so Americans from remote communities could have connecting flights to travel hubs, like Washington D.C..
Last year, the program dished out almost $400 million dollars to 115 communities in the lower 48 states. Breeze Airways is set to receive north of $18 million from the EAS over the next two years to service Ogdensburg. But these contracts get shuffled around a lot. For the last two years, Contour Airlines connected the North Country to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Blake Doyle, a frequent traveler from Ogdensburg, hopes that Breeze Airways will be a better fit than their predecessor. “I’ve used Contour the last couple years and was a little upset with them a lot because they canceled flights a lot,” said Doyle. “So we’d be kind of stuck in Philadelphia and have to spend the night. So they almost got to where we just would drive to Syracuse. So, I’m hoping this will be more reliable.”
New York State Assemblyman Scott Gray’s district is home to three of the North Country’s five airports with EAS flights. He said having flights available is for more than getting away on the weekends. “The connections are very important to people in terms of their leisure travel, but it really is It is really an economic engine right to have error service commercial air service in these airports,” said Gray.
Gray said he understands concerns about flight emissions but sees them as a necessary byproduct having air service anywhere. “Anytime that we make environmental decisions. We have to make sure that this isn’t at the expense of our economy as well. I think both can exist in both can do well parallel tracks,” added Gray.
Breeze Airway’s airbus A220- 300 is soon to be the largest capacity plane being subsidized by the EAS, currently behind just the Sun Country Boeing 737 serving the Eau Claire, Wisconsin Airport. That contract sunsets on December 1st. Most other EAS subsidized flights use either planes that seat less than ten or ones that hold between 50 and 70.