He had about $25 million at the time, but he found himself moping around Salt Lake City, unsure of what to do next and hampered by a five-year noncompete clause he signed with Kelleher, which made it impossible for him to get back into the airline business right away. He told author Barbara Peterson that he cried after receiving the news.

Neeleman kept himself busy after Southwest — advising a Canadian discount carrier, West Jet, and running a reservation company that he eventually sold to Hewlett-Packard — but all along he knew he had to take off again with an airline of his own once the noncompete clause expired.

His new concept was simple: a discount airline with frills. First, though, he knew he needed to raise a lot of money. The man who once told a journalist that "people who invest in aviation are the biggest suckers in the world" put in $5 million of his own money and persuaded others, including international financier George Soros, to contribute a total of $128 million — the most ever raised by a startup in the deregulated era.

Passengers took to the oddball, underdog ethos of JetBlue, which launched in early 2000. The airline was profitable by its third full quarter and went public in 2002, taking advantage of the many problems experienced by higher-cost competitors, such as US Airways.

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E-mail: dfitzpatrick@post-gazette.com