I Used to Fly Spirit to Cancun. Now Breeze Is Picking Up the Slack.

I’ve flown to Cancun more times than I can count, and for years the booking ritual was the same: pull up Spirit, pull up JetBlue, pick whichever one was cheaper that week, get on the plane. Spirit usually won — at least when I was willing to take a layover. I know Spirit gets dragged regularly, but they always treated me right. And honestly, once the legacy carriers started rolling out their own basic-economy fares — no carry-on, no seat assignment, no changes — was the gap between Spirit and the rest really that big? The money I saved on airfare went toward the part of the trip that actually mattered: the resort, the food, the days in the water.

That option is gone now. Spirit shut down operations entirely, and a meaningful chunk of affordable Caribbean access from Tampa went with it.

The natural assumption is, well, JetBlue is still there. And technically that’s true. But “still there” has quietly turned into something different. JetBlue is down to one nonstop per day from Tampa to Cancun, and fares are now starting around $300 one-way for most travel dates — closer to $460 if you want to be on a beach in December. That’s not a typo. A round-trip nonstop on JetBlue to Cancun out of Tampa is comfortably in the $600 range now, before bags. For a long weekend, that’s most of the resort budget.

So when Breeze Airways announced two new nonstop routes out of Tampa this December, I paid attention.

What’s actually launching

• Tampa → Cancun (CUN) — starts December 19, twice weekly on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Fares from $129 one-way. This is Breeze’s first-ever Mexico route from TPA.
• Tampa → St. Thomas (STT) — starts December 16, twice weekly on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Fares from $149 one-way. This is the first-ever nonstop between Tampa and the U.S. Virgin Islands, full stop. No airline has done it before.

Tickets are already on sale. The aircraft is the Airbus A220 — quiet, modern, a noticeably better ride than what most low-cost carriers fly.

To put the Cancun pricing in context: Breeze is launching at less than half of what JetBlue is currently asking. A $129 one-way on Breeze versus $300+ one-way on JetBlue is not a small difference — it’s the difference between “this trip is happening” and “let me check back next month and see if the prices come down.”

Why nonstop matters more than people give it credit for

Here’s the thing about flying to a beach destination: a delay is tolerable — annoying, but tolerable. A delay that makes you miss your connection with no alternate flight to your resort that day is something else entirely. That’s not an inconvenience, it’s a rewrite of your entire vacation. Caribbean and island routes don’t run on the cadence of a New York or Atlanta shuttle. Miss the one afternoon flight and you’re not losing a few hours — you’re losing the first night of your trip, sometimes more.

Nonstop service erases that anxiety entirely. You get on the plane in Tampa, you get off in Cancun, you’re at the resort by check-in. That’s the whole equation. The peace of mind isn’t a luxury — it’s the actual product you’re paying for when you book a direct flight.

Breeze’s twice-weekly schedule isn’t going to replace daily service. If your dates aren’t flexible around Wednesdays and Saturdays, this won’t help you. But for the trips where they do line up — a long weekend, a Wed-to-Sat or Sat-to-Wed pattern — this is a legitimately useful option at a price point that doesn’t make you flinch.

And then there’s St. Thomas

I’ll be honest, this is the one that surprised me. St. Thomas has been weirdly hard to get to from Tampa for years. The usual route was a connection through Charlotte or San Juan, which burned half a vacation day each way. Most people I know who wanted to get to the USVI just gave up and went to Mexico or the Bahamas instead.

A direct flight changes that math. Two and a half hours from TPA to Cyril E. King, no passport needed (the USVI is U.S. territory), and you’re on island. That’s an entirely different kind of trip than “fly to Charlotte, wait three hours, fly to St. Thomas, arrive exhausted.”

I don’t have a Jet’s Pick property in St. Thomas yet, but I’m now actively looking. The adults-only, water-forward inventory there is real — secluded villas, small luxury properties on the east end — and with a direct flight from Tampa, it moves from “maybe someday” to “let’s plan something for next winter.”

The honest catch

One airline adding two routes doesn’t fully patch the hole Spirit left when it went down. St. Thomas, for example, lost its old Spirit connections to Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, and the broader Caribbean map is still smaller than it was a year ago. Fares “from $129” and “$149” are floors — holiday pricing will look different, and the further out you book, the better.

But this is real progress for anyone flying out of Tampa. Two new nonstops to genuinely water-forward destinations, on a nicer aircraft than the budget carriers used to fly, at fares that don’t require you to compromise on the rest of the trip. I’ll take it. And I’ll be on one of those flights this December — I’m already running the dates.

Fares and schedule per Breeze Airways and Tampa International Airport announcements, May 2026. JetBlue pricing per jetblue.com as of May 2026. Verify current schedules and fares at the time of booking.