Feb 4, 2019 · 1h 8m · how-i-built-this
JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews aviation innovator David Neeleman about his path from early failures and getting fired by Southwest Airlines to founding JetBlue Airways and Azul Brazilian Airlines through servant leadership and customer-centric design.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 28.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 5.2 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 1.1 Guy pushing back 0.7
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 53:20 Board ouster disagreement
Neeleman emphatically rejects the board's decision to remove him after the 2007 blizzard, calling it unequivocally the wrong choice driven by misplaced concerns over founder syndrome.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 52:05 Pressing on the Valentine's Day meltdownGuy Raz directly challenges Neeleman on whether the cancellation of 1,200 flights and multi-hour tarmac delays was fundamentally an unforced failure of management.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 26:05 Schooling on the invention of e-ticketingNeeleman corrects the common misconception about Southwest's innovation, explaining that Morris Air pioneered and built the world's first electronic ticketless reservation system.
Guy holds their own ▶ 42:21 Highlighting Southwest's mono-fleet cost advantageRaz demonstrates deep industry expertise by analyzing Southwest's single-fleet operational efficiencies and questioning whether JetBlue planned to copy that exact Boeing 737 strategy.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mormon Heritage and Early Business Lessons | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz sets up Neeleman's early life and Mormon roots, asking standard biographical questions about his childhood work ethic. Neeleman shares personal family history and working at his grandfather's store without any friction. | |
| Academic Struggles and Navigating Undiagnosed ADD | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz asks about Neeleman's academic performance and notes the lack of ADD diagnoses in the 1970s. Neeleman explains how his undiagnosed ADD severely hindered conventional learning but channeled intense hyperfocus toward topics he cared about. | |
| LDS Mission to Brazil and Sales Parallels | 5 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Raz draws a thoughtful parallel between missionary work and business sales pitching. Neeleman agrees and illustrates how door-to-door missionary service builds fearless salesmanship and personal discipline. | |
| Hawaii Travel Packages and First Business Collapse | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz tracks the rapid growth and sudden collapse of Neeleman's first Hawaii package tour venture. Neeleman transparently recounts his overextension and the costly lessons learned from relying on Hawaii Express before it folded. | |
| Rebuilding with June Morris and Morris Air Charters | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Raz demonstrates strong understanding of the charter flight mechanics and airline deregulation history. Neeleman details partnering with June Morris and repurposing idle aircraft capacity on the Salt Lake to LA route. | |
| Certifying Morris Air and Early Profit Distribution | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Raz highlights key aviation figures like Steve Udvar-Hazy, showcasing industry knowledge. Neeleman humorously explains the three-way profit split and paying off his mortgage in his twenties. | |
| Inventing E-Ticketing and Sale to Southwest | 6 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Raz brings up the $130 million Southwest acquisition, and Neeleman educates him on how Morris Air actually invented ticketless e-travel before Southwest did. Neeleman also touches on June Morris's cancer diagnosis and the acquisition decision. | |
| Corporate Friction and Ouster at Southwest Airlines | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Raz probes into how Neeleman's intense pace clashed with Southwest's established corporate culture, leading Herb Kelleher to fire him within five months. Neeleman gives an emotional, vulnerable account of the meeting at Ruth's Chris. | |
| Mid-Show Interlude and Non-Compete Period | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Raz inquires about the carbon-copy ticketing era and the non-compete period. Neeleman describes developing and selling the Navitaire reservation system while biding his time against Herb Kelleher's strict enforcement. | |
| Designing JetBlue and Identifying the JFK Hub | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Raz asks why the market needed another airline given the high failure rate in aviation. Neeleman explains his strategic insight on JFK's daytime runway availability and his near-deal with Richard Branson for Virgin America. | |
| Choosing Airbus Fleet and Championing Servant Leadership | 6 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Raz queries fleet strategy comparing Boeing 737s to Airbus. Neeleman explains how Airbus won the deal by offering better pricing, wider cabins, and fly-by-wire technology. | |
| Culture of Service, In-Flight Engagement, and Execution | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Raz asks whether Neeleman's onboard service routine was just public relations shtick and presses him on non-union status. Neeleman defends servant leadership and explains his hiring criteria and operational dashboards. | |
| The 2007 Valentine's Day Meltdown and Board Removal | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Raz aggressively presses on the 2007 Valentine's Day blizzard crisis where passengers were stranded on tarmacs for up to 10 hours. Neeleman pushes back against the media storm while acknowledging management failure and expressing deep sorrow over being ousted by the board. | |
| Starting Over in Brazil: The Founding of Azul | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Raz notes Brazil's aerospace capacity, and Neeleman explains identifying unserved regional routes with Embraer jets to build Azul, ensuring he retains absolute voting control this time. | |
| Family Life and Principles of Servant Leadership | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz inquires about balancing a massive career with raising 10 children. Neeleman details his strict rule of being home on weekends and articulates his core leadership ethos of improving employees' lives. | |
| Embracing ADD and Founding New Ventures | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz asks the signature question on skill versus luck. Neeleman champions ADD as a superpower for simplifying complex problems, concluding with a teaser for his next venture. | |
| How You Built That: Lisa Dalton's Can-Do Labels | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz hosts the 'How You Built That' segment featuring Lisa Dalton, who shares the story of creating 3D-printed Can-Do Braille labels for pantry items. |
Statements from this episode (25)
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…”
Neeleman: Provo Sales Companies Recruit Fearless Returned Missionaries
“Yeah, I mean, it's, there's a lot of companies that are in Provo, Utah, that do door-to-door sales of alarm systems, and pest control, and whatever, and, you know, they take all these guys that have come, and gals that have come home from missions, that are ki…”
Neeleman: College travel company reached $6 million in annual revenue
“The company was doing six million dollars a year,”
Neeleman lost $500K in his first venture when Hawaii Express collapsed
“It did, because I had prepaid, you know, every single ticket, And it was about a half a million dollars.”
Neeleman: Morris Air Charters launched Hawaii packages for $399 on chartered DC-8s
“You'd spend, you know, basically seven days, six nights in Hawaii, and then fly direct, and the whole package was three 99, because we were buying the charter flight, and so we started this company called Morris Air Charters, and that was kind of the hallmark …”
Neeleman used idle Hawaiian Airlines planes for $69 Salt Lake-to-LA flights
“I put flights onto Los Angeles for 69 dollars using this old airplane, flying into the old West Imperial Terminal.”
Neeleman: Aircraft leasing enables low-capital airline bootstrapping via maintenance reserves
“You aren't buying the airplanes. You're just, you know, agreeing to pay them like a monthly rent payment on the airplanes with leasing. And then they take a certain amount per hour in reserves for maintenance. And then when the planes go in for maintenance, th…”
Raz: Southwest acquired Morris Air for $130M in 1993
“Southwest, in 1993, buys the company for a hundred and thirty million dollars.”
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: Finished Morris Air's two-year Southwest integration in six months
“They asked me to take two years to integrate Morris into Southwest, and within six months, I had it all done.”
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 Airlines fired Neeleman just five months after acquiring his company
“So I started in December, and they fired me in May.”
Neeleman: 1990s airlines lacked relational databases and real-time reservation data
“Airlines had these big mainframe computer systems they were using at the time, and everything was done on a flat file. So there was no relational databases. The actual, the database was actually the ticket. So if you lost your ticket, and, you know, it became …”
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…”
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.”
JetBlue raised an unprecedented $135 million before launching commercial operations
“We moved, I moved the family to Connecticut in July of 99, and we were, you know, full bore, had raised a hundred and thirty-five million dollars, and so we were ready to go.”
Neeleman: JetBlue chose Airbus even after Boeing dropped its 737 price
“Boeing ended up coming below that number, which I would have shaken with him on the first day but we were, we went with Airbus, and we've had a great relationship with it.”
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…”
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 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: Brazil's top 25 cities had nonstops only 20% of the time
“The 25 largest cities in Brazil only had non-stops about 20% of the time, but then there were like 50 cities that had no service that needed service.”
Neeleman: Brazilian airfares were double US airfares prior to Azul
“Fares were really high. They were about double where they were in the United States.”
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 structured Azul's voting control so he can never be fired again
“I can't be fired at Azul.”
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, …”