Far from running scared, serial aviation entrepreneur David Neeleman says he doesn’t think the airline he founded a quarter century ago, JetBlue, will provide serious competition to his latest airline, Breeze Airways, when the two start going head-to-head from Vero Beach Regional Airport in December.

“We really don’t see JetBlue as that much competition to us,” Breeze CEO Neeleman said in a telephone interview with Vero Beach 32963.  He said the Vero market has been very good to the young carrier, and that Breeze intends to continue growing here, looking to add flights to an additional New York area airport this winter. “We’re doubling down,” he said.

Breeze brought regularly scheduled passenger service back to the Vero Beach airport in 2023, and with strong local support, has expanded rapidly becoming a mainstay for area residents who travel back and forth to the Northeast.

JetBlue surprised many a couple of weeks ago when it announced it would launch daily passenger service in mid-December from Vero Beach to the Boston and New York areas. 

More than half of Breeze’s current flights go to airports in the New York or Boston markets, and it plans to continue serving the two markets targeted by JetBlue.

“We’re absolutely not withdrawing – far from it,” Neeleman said

While JetBlue plans to fly to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Neeleman said Breeze will keep its existing routes from Vero Beach to Stewart Field, Islip and White Plains around the New York area, and is looking at starting a new service this coming season to an airport to be determined on the New Jersey side of the New York area.

He noted that people living on the Jersey side would probably prefer not to have to go to one of the secondary airports around New York City that Breeze serves, or to JFK, the hub of JetBlue.

“Everyone knows that JFK is an undesirable airport,” Neeleman said. “We don’t want that route anyway. Our destinations of White Plains in Westchester County, Islip on Long Island and Stewart Field just west of the Hudson River are much better airports.”

As for New England, JetBlue plans to fly into Logan International Airport in Boston, while Breeze will continue to offer service to airports in nearby Providence and Hartford.

“Everybody in New England knows that Providence is a much better airport than Logan,” Neeleman said.

Neeleman also said he didn’t quite understand how JetBlue could start selling tickets on its planned routes from Vero Beach to JFK and Boston Logan in December when they don’t even know what departure and arrival times will be available to them.

The small Vero Beach airport terminal will not be able to handle JetBlue and Breeze flights at the same time because of its limited passenger capacity, and local authorities have said Breeze will have priority in case of scheduling conflicts because of its history with Vero Beach.

“They’ve started selling tickets on routes that they should know they won’t be able to fly,” Neeleman said.

Breeze, which began operations in 2021 as a low-cost airline, also offers first-class seating for what it calls its “nicest” seats with extra space, popular with many Vero Beach residents, while JetBlue does not have a first class on its domestic routes.

Apart from its planned expansion into New Jersey, Breeze also flies to Washington-Dulles and from there onward to northern New York State just south of the Canadian border.

Neeleman, now 65, has become a remarkable entrepreneur in the air travel industry, having founded five commercial airlines: MorrisAir, WestJet, JetBlue, Azul Brazilian Airways and most recently Breeze. He previously told 32963 that Breeze is his last venture. “This is it,” he said.

Neeleman was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, while his father Gary, who passed away last year, was bureau manager there for the U.S. news service UPI. He took advantage of his Brazilian birthright citizenship to found Azul (which means “blue” in Portuguese and Spanish) on the model of JetBlue and quickly made it into the No. 1 Brazilian airline. Neeleman still goes to Sao Paul several times a year for Azul board meetings.

He founded JetBlue in 1999 and took it public before resigning as CEO in 2007.

Neeleman also had a brief adventure in the European air travel market. He invested in Cyprus to get a Cyprus passport (his third nationality in addition to U.S. and Brazilian) to enable him to do business in the European Union with fewer restrictions. 

He then bought a controlling share in TAP, the Portuguese airline, with the idea of turning it into a low-cost carrier in Europe on the JetBlue and Azul models. But after new elections, the Portuguese government decided it wanted to keep TAP as a national flag carrier and Neeleman sold his shares back to the state.

Even though he realizes that the new competition for the Vero Beach market with his former airline seems somewhat ironic, Neeleman says it’s nothing personal.

“It’s just business,” Neeleman says. “We like our business with Vero Beach and we’re looking to grow it even more.”