Neeleman's talents took flight with JetBlue

Neeleman has heard the warnings — and dismisses them. He insists that JetBlue will not be another People Express, a hot start-up in the 1980s that generated a lot of buzz but lasted only six years. Still, "If you are in the airline business and you don't have a fear of failure," said Neeleman, 46, "you are in La-La land."

Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to a father stationed there as a UPI correspondent, Neeleman was 19 when he found his way back to the country of his birth on a missionary assignment for the LDS Church. It was a trip that would change his life.

Finding the discipline he lacked in school, Neeleman learned to speak fluent Portuguese, visited poor villages without running water or electricity and converted more than 200 people to the Mormon faith in two years — well above normal recruiting levels for a person his age. The church made him assistant to the head of Mormon missions for that country, helping direct the activities of 100 volunteers.

"That was really the first time in my life I had excelled at anything," Neeleman said in a telephone interview from his Forest Hills office.

When he came home, he said he knew: "I can succeed at something."

Others saw that salesmanship in him earlier. At 9, he stood on a crate to work the register at his grandfather's Salt Lake grocery store, demonstrating an ease with both numbers and people.

One customer-service lesson learned at the grocery store would come in handy later — customers were happy to pay when they received exactly what they wanted.

Later, at the University of Utah, Neeleman started a travel agency that packaged cheap trips to Hawaii, a venture that pulled in as much as $1,000 a day. He dropped out his junior year to run it full time. He had $150,000 in the bank.

But that all disappeared in 1983 when the airline supplying his seats went under, forcing him to file for bankruptcy. It was Neeleman's first business failure, and he took it hard, later saying he was "devastated." Married with two children, he returned to his grandfather's Salt Lake grocery store, once again working the register and stocking the shelves.

But Neeleman bounced back from failure in a big way. His uncle hooked him up with June Morris, the owner of the largest travel agency in Utah, and Neeleman built Morris Air into a 22-plane regional carrier that Southwest Airlines purchased for $129 million in 1993.

Neeleman, at 34, cleared at least $20 million in the deal, and landed a job with his idol, Kelleher. Neeleman had modeled many of Morris Air's policies after the Dallas carrier, including plastic boarding passes, no meals and quick turnarounds at the gate.

That job at Southwest lasted only five months, however. Kelleher fired the mercurial Neeleman after employees complained about his outbursts.