Biography
Neeleman was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and raised in the United States, to a family of Dutch and North American descent. He lived in Brazil until he was five. He attended Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, and attended the University of Utah for three years before dropping out. He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Northeast Region, Brazil.
He co-founded (with June Morris) Morris Air, a low-fare charter airline, and from 1984 to 1988, he was executive vice president of the company. In 1988 Neeleman assumed the helm of Morris Air as its president. Then when Morris Air was acquired by Southwest Airlines for $20 million in 1993, he worked for a short time 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.
As the CEO of JetBlue Airways, his 2002 salary was $200,000 with a bonus of $90,000. Neeleman donated his entire salary to the JetBlue Crewmember Crisis Fund, which was established for JetBlue employees who had fallen on hard times.
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.
Read more about this topic: David Neeleman
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