David Neeleman
David G. Neeleman (born October 16, 1959) founder and CEO of JetBlue Airways.
Neeleman, a Latter-day Saint American of Dutch descent, was born in Brazil and lived there until he was five years old. He attended Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights, UT, and attended the University of Utah. He did his full-time missionary work for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.
He was co-founder (with June Morris) of charter airline Morris Air, a low-fare airline. From 1984 to 1988, he was an Executive Vice President of Morris Air and then from 1988 to 1994, he was the President of Morris Air Corporation. Morris Air was then acquired by Southwest Airlines for $130 million in 1993. For a brief period, he worked on the Executive Planning Committee at Southwest Airlines.
He co-founded Canadian airline WestJet in 1996 and was concurrently the Chief Executive Officer of Open Skies, (a touch screen airline reservation and check-in systems company, acquired by Hewlett Packard in 1999).
In 2000, he disclosed to CNN that he has Adult attention-deficit disorder. As the CEO of JetBlue Airways, his 2002 salary was $200,000 with a bonus of $90,000.
On May 10, 2007, JetBlue moved David Neeleman to the role of nonexecutive chairman.
Neeleman said the new role will free him up to spend more time on strategic issues that had been neglected amid the carrier's rapid growth. Neeleman recently founded a new airline in Brazil, Azul Brazilian Airlines. Along with Humberto Pedrosa and Aigle Azur, he owned 45 percent of TAP Air Portugal. On October 30, 2013, Neeleman and his youngest brother, Mark James Neeleman, a co-founder of Azul, announced the launch of a new company, Vigzul, a home security and monitoring company.
In June 2018, he announced plans for a new US airline called Breeze Airways[1] for which he raised $100m capital. By July 17, 2018, Breeze Airways signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Airbus for 60 A220-300 aircraft to be delivered beginning in 2021.
Neeleman was married to Vicki Vranes and he is the father of ten children. He has citizenship in the United States, Brazil, and Cyprus.
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