David Neeleman

He co-founded (with June Morris) Morris Air, a low-fare charter airline, and from 1984 to 1988, he was the executive vice president of the company. In 1988 Neeleman assumed the helm of Morris Air as its president. In 1993, when Morris Air was acquired by Southwest Airlines for $130 million (Neeleman received $25 million from the sale), he worked for five months on their Executive Planning Committee.

After leaving Southwest, Neeleman became the CEO of Open Skies, a touch screen airline reservation and check-in systems company, later acquired by HP in 1999. At the same time, he helped with another upstart airline, WestJet. JetBlue was incorporated in Delaware in August 1998 and officially founded in February 1999, under the name "NewAir" by Neeleman.

On May 10, 2007, David Neeleman was replaced by David Barger as CEO of JetBlue and on May 21, 2008 he was replaced as chairman of the board by Joel Peterson.

On March 27, 2008 Neeleman officially announced plans to launch a new airline, Azul (Portuguese for "blue"), a domestic carrier in Brazil. Azul will complete 2013 with over 5 Billion (BRL) in sales and is currently Brazil's third-largest airline.

On October 30, 2013 Neeleman and his youngest brother Mark James Neeleman, a cofounder of Azul, announced the launch of a new company, Vigzul, a home security and monitoring company. Vigzul came from an idea of Mark Neeleman and was founded by David Allred, Brett Chambers and Neeleman serves as Chairman of the board and principal investor.

In June 2015, the Portuguese Government decided to sell the TAP Air Portugal Group, owner of the national air carrier, TAP Air Portugal, to the Gateway consortium with David Neeleman in partnership with Humberto Pedrosa who take control of 61% of the capital of the Portuguese carrier. TAP Air Portugal will maintain the country as the airline’s main hub for a minimum of 30 years.

In June 2018, he announced plans for a new US airline called Breeze Airways for which he raised $100m capital. On July 17, 2018, Breeze Airways signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Airbus for 60 A220-300 aircraft to be delivered beginning in 2021.