The Man Who Can’t Stop Founding Budget Airlines

BY ROSHAN FERNANDEZ

Cottonwood Heights, Utah

Executives at discount carrier Breeze Airways were recently plotting ways to shorten the time planes spend idling at airport gates. Founder David Neeleman immediately thought of seat belts.

After passengers deplane, cleaning crews’ tasks include picking up dangling seat belt buckles and crisscrossing them on the seats. It’s an industry standard. It also drives Neeleman crazy.

“I’m like, ‘Why are we crossing?’ ” Neeleman said. “Because then [to] sit down, you have to uncross it.”

His bigger point: Were there ways to minimize turnaround times that Breeze hadn’t thought of?

Executives consulted employees and returned with ideas Breeze implemented to save valuable minutes: sometimes using sweepers instead of large vacuums, lining up departing passengers in the jetbridge early, asking arriving passengers to do a bit of their own cleanup And yes, the airline stopped crossing some seat belts on some flights.

“He throws crazy ideas out there just to get people thinking of, ‘Well, what can we do?’ ” said Fiona Kiesel, Breeze’s chief guest officer.

A college dropout, Neeleman is the founder of five airlines, including Jet-Blue, in the U.S., Canada and Brazil. He’s used the same playbook every time: Avoid competing with the big airlines, provide a distinctive service and do everything possible to keep costs low.

That approach has helped the 65year-old forge a decadeslong career in an industry that’s intensely competitive, tightly regulated and infamously difficult to turn a profit in.

“There’s a lot more people that have lost money in this business than have made money,” Neeleman said.

Neeleman is counting on his strategy to help Breeze thrive at a time when the budget-airline model is under threat. The biggest airlines have expanded their own bargains, catering to a broader range of fliers and matching what smaller or budget carriers can offer.

Breeze began flying in 2021, and it’s still an upstart. For some time Ballerina Farm, the ranch and viral socialmedia account run by Neeleman’s daughter-in-law, Hannah Neeleman, was more profitable, he said. The airline reported its first full quarter of operating profit at the end of 2024 and has been growing steadily, now serving 70 cities with more than 280 routes.

Former and current colleagues say Neeleman’s font of ideas strays from industry norms. Sometimes they break through, like when JetBlue, which Neeleman launched in 1998, became one of the first to offer live TV for all passengers. Other times he floats untested concepts because he can envision the goal but hasn’t worked out how best to achieve it yet.

“He needs people to play tennis with,” said John Rodgerson, chief executive of Brazil-based Azul Airlines, another Neeleman creation. “He’s bouncing ideas, and you’re bouncing back.”

Neeleman got his start in business at age 9, standing on a milk crate to work the register at his grandfather’s Salt Lake City convenience store. His infatuation with flying dates back earlier— a plane adorned his birthday cake when he turned 3. Neeleman sold travel packages as a student at the University of Utah, and later helped organize charter flights.

Every Neeleman airline began when he spotted a hole in the market. When he launched Morris Air in 1984, Neeleman connected Utahns to the West Coast and tourist destinations like Hawaii. WestJet offered low-cost flights that linked previously unserved Canadian cities. With JetBlue, John F. Kennedy International Airport didn’t have a domestic, low-cost airline. Executives used to say they competed only with customers’ cars, or their couches.

Azul introduced air service for millions of Brazilians who didn’t have it.

With Breeze, it is connecting U.S. cities that had lost nonstop service. Among the airline’s direct routes: Erie, Pa., to Tampa, Fla.; Montrose, Colo., to Orange County, Calif.; and South Bend, Ind., to Ogdensburg, N.Y.

Morris was eventually acquired by Southwest; his four other airlines are still operating.

In Neeleman’s view, competing head-to-head with industry giants is a losing game. Speaking at a Breeze employee- training session in mid-February, Neeleman wrote two numbers on a whiteboard: 90% and 86%.

The first figure reflected the percentage of routes where Spirit overlaps with other airlines. “They are in bankruptcy,” he said. (Spirit exited chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month).

The second was the percentage of nonstop routes where Breeze has no competition—a figure that has now ticked up to 87%. “You aren’t just doing what everybody else is doing,” he said in an interview.

Another big part of his strategy is finding ways to do it cheaper. When launching Morris Air, his first airline, Neeleman opted to serve Costco’s humongous chocolate-chip muffins— low cost and perfect for Morris Air’s many morning flights, said Michael Lazarus, an investor in four of Neeleman’s airlines. When JetBlue introduced its first cross-country flight, the best meal option within Neeleman’s strict $1-a-customer budget was a bagel with turkey and cheese and a Tootsie Roll, according to Amy Curtis-McIntyre, a former Breeze board member and then JetBlue’s marketing chief.

Instead, executives decided to serve the usual chips and cookies, explaining that the airline had invested in new planes with live TV and low fares— while reminding fliers to bring their own food.

Neeleman has had a firsthand look at how big airlines operate. After selling Morris Air to Southwest in 1994, he stayed on as an executive, helping change Southwest’s peak-pricing model, implementing electronic ticketing, and revamping their 1-800 number to save money.

Herb Kelleher, the late Southwest founder and then CEO, told Neeleman he’d made three years’ worth of adjustments in five months.

“He was a bull in a china shop,” said Lazarus, his investor. Neeleman was impetuous, which he attributes in part to his ADHD. Meetings dragged on while he thought there was a simple solution. He’d repeatedly write “DSAW”—don’t say a word—to himself to avoid blurting out thoughts.

It didn’t work. Kelleher told Neeleman that even his biggest supporters thought he’d been too disruptive, and he was fired.

Neeleman said he got bored at Jet-Blue too, and was ousted as CEO in 2007 after an operations meltdown and disagreements over the way the company was being run.

At Breeze headquarters, Neeleman wanders the halls, chatting with employees as he hunts for beef-jerky strips and other low-carb snacks.

Wandering around has long been part of Neeleman’s management style. He used to make the short trip from JetBlue’s New York office to JFK a few times a week to load baggage, scan boarding passes and play basketball with ramp agents.

When Breeze had trouble retaining pilots initially, Neeleman began holding weekly meetings to understand the problem. He also gave his cellphone number to the airline’s nearly 600 pilots. Retention improved, said Trey Urbahn, a former JetBlue and Azul executive who’s now a Breeze board member.

“He’ll talk to the CEO,” said Rodgerson. “But he’ll also talk to the guy cleaning the bathroom.”