JetBlue Girds for New Competition as Its Founder Prepares to Start a New U.S. Airline
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JetBlue's president and its CEO say they're not worried about competing with JetBlue's founder, David Neeleman, who may be starting a new U.S. airline as soon as 2020. Behind the scenes, we bet it's not their favorite idea. But we do believe they're not surprised Neeleman wants back in. Even since Neeleman was pushed out of JetBlue, insiders expected he would return someday.
If JetBlue Airways founder David Neeleman soon starts the first new U.S. airline in more than a decade — indications suggest he's serious — he may give his former employer fits, considering he created almost everything JetBlue's loyal customers love about the airline.
But the two executives running the company now, CEO Robin Hayes and President and COO Joanna Geraghty, said in an interview they welcome competition from Neeleman, who reportedly is raising $100 million for a U.S. low-cost carrier that could fly by 2020. In addition to taking some JetBlue customers, Neeleman might also poach some of its employees, as many still idolize him more than a decade after he left.
Neeleman, a serial airline industry entrepreneur, was replaced as JetBlue CEO in 2007, seven years after the airline's first flight, with the carrier struggling operationally. He left as chairman the following year, and went on to start a similar airline in Brazil called Azul, before buying a controlling interest in Tap Air Portugal. Early in his career, he co-founded Morris Air, which Southwest Airlines bought in 1993 for roughly $129 million.
"I think David will be successful in whatever he turns his hand to," Hayes s
