David Neeleman
Founder & CEO, Breeze Airways. On 1 show, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveflybreeze.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
David Neeleman is an aviation entrepreneur who founded five commercial airlines, including JetBlue Airways and Azul Brazilian Airlines. He currently serves as the CEO of Breeze Airways and Chairman of Azul.
1shows
5appearances
40statements
21resolved
15supported
0contradicted
71%fully supported
18said about them ↓ Everything David Neeleman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Neeleman views employee unionization as a fundamental failure of corporate leadership
“You know, I always thought if our people need someone else to come tell us how to treat them, then that would be pretty tragic. If I thought I didn't treat our people well enough that they needed somebody else, then, you know, that's not the company I wanted t…”
Southwest claims Smithsonian credit for e-tickets, but Morris Air invented them
“They were, and have credit today in the Smithsonian as being the first Ticketless airline, but it was really our system that did it.”
Neeleman asserts JetBlue's board was completely wrong to remove him as CEO
“It was not only devastating, but it was just absolutely the wrong decision.”
Neeleman: 10,000 of Azul's 13,000 employees volunteered for unpaid leave
“You know, we have about 13,000 people that work for Azul, and, So we went out to the group and said, Hey, you know, everybody we're going to need your help here. Who would like to take a few months off without pay? And remarkably enough we had almost 10,000 of…”
Neeleman: Kelleher suggested Neeleman could eventually succeed him at Southwest
“I mean, he kind of led me to believe that if I just minded my P's and Q's that I would be a successor one day, you know, that I could, you know, follow in his footsteps”
Southwest CEO Herb Kelleher vowed to fiercely enforce Neeleman's non-compete agreement
“About halfway through the non-compete, I called, or a couple, maybe a year and a half into it, I called Herb, and I said, hey, Herb, you know, I've consulted, you know, legal counsel. This thing is not really enforceable. I mean, I didn't get any consideration…”
Neeleman: Resolving service mistakes properly should increase customer loyalty beyond baseline
“If you have a, make a mistake, or you treat someone poorly, or whatever, you need to make them more loyal having had an issue with your company than if they had not had an issue in the first place.”
Neeleman structured Azul's voting control so he can never be fired again
“I can't be fired at Azul.”
Neeleman: Azul's business dropped 95%, cutting flights from 900 to under 50
“You know, our business is off 95%. We had 900 flights a day before the crisis. We're down to under 50 flights a day.”
Neeleman: Azul's daily revenue plummeted from nearly $10M to under $500K
“Our revenue we were doing something close to ten million a day, and now we're doing you know, five percent of that.”
Neeleman: US airline executive expects carrier to shrink by up to 50%
“I was talking to one, you know, airline executive in the US, and they said, you know, we're probably going to be 25% smaller If we come back in a few months, but if this goes for a year, we could be 50% smaller or more.”
Founders with ADHD should delegate weaknesses and simplify complex problems
“And so, you have that, all that kind of negative stuff, which you can solve by just hiring good people that can fix all that, and then you have this ability just to hone in on things, and just to take really complicated things and just simplify them.”
Neeleman: Azul directors and VPs must speak to every passenger on their flights
“Every single one of our directors or VPs, when they fly on a flight, they have to talk to every single customer on the flight.”
Neeleman: Class Mobility in Brazil Is Virtually Impossible
“In Brazil, it's virtually impossible to do that, and it made me very resentful, and you know, I really, in, in that, you know, I got tucked away in my mind that I would, I wanted to come back to Brazil, and I wanted to do something to help these people at some…”
JetBlue was originally planned to launch as Virgin America with Richard Branson
“And I, you know, I was talking to early, to Richard Branson early on. JetBlue was going to be called Virgin America.”
Neeleman: Azul is Brazil's #1 airline in departures and cities served
“It's the number one airline in terms of daily departures. Number one airline in numbers of cities serves. We serve over a hundred cities in Brazil. We have 800 flights a day. We fly about 80,000 people every single day.”
Neeleman: ADD gives me the ability to simplify complex problems
“My form of ADD has an, I have an ability to just look at a situation that's very complex and simplify it, and say, let's just do it this way, and it drives my teams crazy because they're like, no, it's not that simple. I'm saying, yes, it is. Just go do this, …”
Neeleman: Azul has no nonstop competition in 85% of markets
“Even till today, Azul, about 85% of their markets, they have no nonstop competition.”
Neeleman: 125 US cities lost 25% of air service in decade
“125 cities had lost 25% of their air service over the last 10 years.”
Neeleman: Breeze Airways operates 314 routes across 89 cities
“We were, we've announced 89 cities. We're in 36 different states. We have 314 different routes, and people love flying us.”
Neeleman: Breeze Airways has highest NPS of any airline he's founded
“It's the highest NPS score I've ever seen in any of my airlines I've ever started.”
Neeleman: Azul aircraft suppliers granted six-month payment deferrals during COVID-19
“A lot of our salaries have been reduced, and those that supply our planes for us have said, hey, don't pay us for six months.”
Neeleman credits his Brazil mission over college for building his confidence
“Be plucked from your life, and put into a completely different environment, and to be able to learn a foreign language, and to be able to kind of learn from a new land, and it just had a profound influence on me, and it changed my life in ways that, you know, …”
The other half of the tape: David Neeleman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 18 times in 12 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 15Andy Dunn 2Ian Murray 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 18
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 2 mentions in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2019 10 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Breeze Airways | 5 | 40 | 71% 15/21 | full record on How I Built This → |