JetBlue’s and Azul airlines founder and Morris air and WestJet co-founder David Neeleman one of the most successful entrepreneur in the world, spoke about his success story, and how he become top name in aviation business.
David Neeleman is also a co-owner of TAP Air Portugal. Earlier, this year Brazilian origin airlines announced plans to launch another airline, An American low-cost carrier called Moxy announced a collaboration WestJet, Jetblue and Azul. Neeleman started everything from scratch from developing new airline to taking it into another level and then profitable business.
David Neeleman in an interview revels the details and added that “the first thing to get into the business is choosing the right reason and the reason should be valid nit for the sake of doing it.
“Sometimes people get into the aviation business just because it looks exciting to them, but they don’t have a lot experience, he also added that in such cases there’s is high risk of money loss”.
According to him, investing in industries in which you have a little knowledge and experience is surefire way to quickly fail. You have to figure out whether there is an opening or opportunity in the marketplace for the business to fill.
He reveled that WestJet airlines came into play when other Canadian airlines were not performing well in the market, in terms of financial stability and customer satisfaction, with this at that time there was a space in market for a new company to take over the existing companies. Neeleman explained how Air Canada ended up acquiring Canadian airlines market in 2001. Now a days WestJet is second largest airline company in Canada.
He also explained the scenario of Jetblue. It came when he noticed that the shortcoming of Americas major carrier made them vulnerable to a newcomer.
“It was a time when the legacy carriers were offering really bad service, their cost were ultra-high and they were just right for the plucking. In response neeleman founded JetBlue’s which calls itself a customer service company that flies airplanes.
After partying with JetBlue’s neeleman forms Azul airlines in the year 2008, it is a Brazilian aviation company who offer low cost carriers. The entrepreneur noticed that most of the Brazilian big cities have airports, but no airline services. Azul then came into picture and filled that gap. As a result, it is third largest airline in Brazil.
Neeleman co-founded his first aircraft Morris air in 1984 and served as a company president until it was sold to southwest airlines for $129 million in 1994.
He added that when he was short of money he eventually decided to sell Morris to gain some good profit and when took this decision he was just 33 years old, which was itself a huge achievement for him.
At the end he added that “there are need to build around loyal and competent people who know what they are doing”” I have got some people who are still with me from the starting day of Azul formation and even the people who work with me while Morris was launched are working with me currently, “They are like my family members and they know well how to run an airline business.
Image Source: Business Insider
