JetBlue Founder Neeleman’s 5th Act Breeze Airways Is Finally Taking Off
Photo Credit: David Neeleman's new airline Breeze Airways will take to the sky on May 27. Breeze Airways / Cean Orrett
Skift Take
Serial airline entrepreneur David Neeleman's new venture Breeze Airways takes off next week. While it may not yet be the Amazon or Uber of airlines, Neeleman is confident in its prospects tapping some of American's pent-up travel demand.
David Neeleman was recently in Huntsville, Alabama, for family reasons. His mother-in-law had passed away. But while there he saw a growing, lively city with people who wanted to travel but, after all of the airline consolidation of the past decade, could not easily do so without a connection at a major airport like Atlanta.
So what does a serial airline entrepreneur do? Adds Huntsville to the list of initial destinations for his latest venture, Breeze Airways.
Breeze will take off from Tampa on May 27 with plans to initially serve 16 destinations, most east of the Mississippi River. The carrier is Neeleman’s fifth after Azul in Brazil, JetBlue Airways, WestJet in Canada, and Morris Air. If there is someone who could launch an all new airline during the worst crisis the industry has ever faced, it’s Neeleman.
“Obviously we've been through a tough year, [what] with Covid and the industry has been particularly hard hit,” Neeleman told Skift in an interview. “But thank
