Latest news with #Neeleman
Associated Press
27-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Breeze Airways Celebrates Four Years of Flying with Network-Wide Promotion
– Save 44% on Breeze flights through Friday – 'Breeze is proving that affordable air travel can still be a nice experience, with free family seating, fast WiFi, an upgraded seat, and no change or cancel fees.'— David Neeleman, Breeze Airways' founder and CEO SALT LAKE CITY, UT, UNITED STATES, May 27, 2025 / / -- Breeze Airways, the premium leisure carrier connecting underserved cities across the U.S., today celebrates its fourth anniversary of delivering convenient, affordable air service to millions of Guests across its growing nationwide network. Since completing its first flight on May 27, 2021, Breeze has become one of the fastest growing airlines in the world, now operating more than 300 direct routes to 72 cities in 32 states. Its 'Seriously Nice' business model combines affordability and flexibility with the premium products and services travelers desire on its brand new fleet of A220-300 aircraft. 'In four short years, Breeze has defied gravity by bringing our unique combination of elevated, yet affordable service to hundreds of underserved city pairs across the U.S.,' said David Neeleman, Breeze Airways founder and CEO. 'What's more, we have done so while also creating an award-winning experience and that has won over the hearts and minds of millions of travelers coast-to-coast by getting them there twice as fast for half the cost.' Saving Time Over the past two decades, underserved and secondary markets have continued to see reductions in air service as mainline carriers maintain the dominant share of the domestic air travel market. To combat this, Breeze established a flexible network to bring affordable air service back to these communities with convenient, direct flights to desirable destinations nationwide. As the only nonstop option on 87% of its more than 250 nonstop routes, Breeze makes air travel more convenient by reducing unnecessary travel time spent driving to larger airports, waiting in long security lines, and making multiple connections before reaching your destination. Additionally, the airline's seamless technology platform empowers Guests to quickly and easily book and manage their flight details and preferences. Through AI-powered tools and chat-based support, nearly 40% of conversations are resolved before reaching a Team Member, resulting in Guest satisfaction scores that continue to increase year over year. Recently, the airline expanded its support features to include an in-app chat option, making Breeze's app one of the most comprehensive applications in the industry. Saving Money With fares on average 44% lower than other carriers serving the same city pairs, Breeze is also redefining travelers' expectations for low-cost carriers. 'Breeze is proving that affordable air travel can still be a nice experience, with bundles and a-la-carte options that fit everyone's travel needs,' Neeleman said. 'Whether you want free family seating, fast WiFi, an upgraded seat, or no change or cancel fees, Breeze is making it nice to fly affordably.' In celebration of its fourth anniversary, Breeze introduced a network-wide promotion in which Guests can save 44% off the base fare of their next flight by using code 'BIRTHDAY' at booking. The promotion is on sale through May 30, 2025 (11:59pm ET) for travel between June 11, 2025 and January 6, 2026. 'We're grateful for our incredible Team Members, business and community partners, and Guests who have supported us the last four years,' Neeleman continued. 'Our ongoing growth is thanks to them, and we look forward to continuing that momentum in the coming months and years.' To learn more about Breeze or to book a flight, visit or download the Breeze Airways app. ### *44% base fare discount applies only to new reservations for round-trip flights with promo code BIRTHDAY. Supply is limited, and no advance purchase requirement applies. Promotion must be purchased at or on the Breeze app from May 27, 2025, through May 30, 2025 (11:59 pm PT), for travel from June 11, 2025, through January 6, 2026. Promotion excludes travel from July 5, 2025, through July 7, 2025; on September 1, 2025; from October 10, 2025, through October 13, 2025; from November 20, 2025, through November 26, 2025; from November 28, 2025, through November 30, 2025; from December 19, 2025, through December 23, 2025; and from December 26, 2025, through January 4, 2026. Travel must be flown on qualifying travel dates for discount to be applied in full. The discount will apply only to flights on qualifying travel dates. All fare rules will apply. Certain flights and/or days of travel may be unavailable. Fare prices, fare classes, rules, routes, and schedules are subject to change or exemption without notice. Promotion cannot be combined with any other offer. Any changes or modifications to qualifying promotional reservations will be subject to fare repricing. A difference in airfare at the current fare price may apply. Offer not valid on group bookings. Other restrictions and blackout dates may apply. About Breeze Airways Breeze Airways operates more than 300 year-round and seasonal routes to 72 cities in 32 states. Founded by aviation entrepreneur David Neeleman, Breeze took flight in May 2021 bringing premium, affordable, and nonstop air service to secondary markets on its flagship fleet of Airbus A220-300 aircraft. Breeze has been named a top 5 'Best Domestic Airline' by Travel + Leisure for three consecutive years and was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in 2025. Breeze was the first U.S. domestic airline to be certified by Autism Double Checked and is the official airline of Make-a-Wish Utah. With seamless booking, friendly policies, and customized booking options, Breeze makes it easy to buy and Seriously Nice™ to fly. McKinnley Matson Breeze Airways +1 801-436-3984 email us here Visit us on social media: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook YouTube TikTok X Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Business of Fashion
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business of Fashion
The Business of Ballerina Farm
MIDWAY, UTAH — Many who stumble upon Hannah Neeleman on TikTok find themselves asking one question after they've spent a bit of time admiring her photogenic farm life: How on earth does she find the time to bake so much homemade bread while raising eight kids? Neeleman chalks it up to meal planning and plenty of advanced prep. But when it comes to Ballerina Farm, the lifestyle brand she launched with husband David Daniel Neeleman, she's enlisted a staff of 60, including multiple chefs, to develop her brand's growing array of food, home, body and wellness products. 'It definitely doesn't happen without a team behind you,' said Neeleman while serving cups of homemade buttermilk at a preview of her brand's new store in May. The Ballerina Farm Store opens in mid-June in the 6,000-person town of Midway, about half an hour south of Utah's ritzy Park City ski area. With a Japanese-inspired charred wood exterior and reclaimed barnwood floors, it has the sort of upscale rustic charm that's equally at home in rural Utah, or a hip shopping street in Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighbourhood. The store sells everything from the brand's Farmer Protein Powder with colostrum to soap made from sourdough crumbs and pig lard, as well as dairy products of the pasteurised variety. A sign on the wall promotes raw milk, which they sell at their farm stand. ADVERTISEMENT Many products are inspired by — and sometimes sourced from — her family farm. Others are imported. Customers can buy cardamom apricot amaretti and ginger rhubarb strawberry kombucha at an in-store cafe counter, or purchase 20th-century Belgian art. 'We've just had fun bringing in beautiful products that are the best in the world,' Neeleman said during the tour. 'Our French salt — I fell in love with salt when we went to France three years ago.' A former Juilliard ballet student who gave up her dance career to buy and run a family farm with her husband, Neeleman's idyllic content has attracted nearly 22 million followers across social platforms. On TikTok, the hashtag #ballerinafarm is up to 2.5 billion views. That hashtag will bring you to a mix of Neeleman's own videos, depicting milking sheep or rolling dough, but also an ecosystem of fans and critics who react to her every move, whether it's receiving an egg apron from her husband or competing in a beauty pageant two weeks after having a baby. With their massive and highly engaged online audience locked in, the Neelemans are moving fast to expand Ballerina Farm into a real-world lifestyle empire. There's the new store, and 20 employees hired in the last four months. Its bestselling Farmer Protein Powder will be stocked at New York's Happier Grocery, the Big Apple's answer to Erewhon, in June. The Neelemans want to create an agritourism site complete with hospitality and an event space. They say the business is profitable, while declining to share sales numbers. The Ballerina Farm Store in Midway, Utah. (Ballerina Farm) Ballerina Farm already has the hallmarks of some of the biggest and trendiest lifestyle brands on the market, with a farm-themed twist. Its product lineup and price points (that protein powder retails for $67 a bag) are similar to brands like Flamingo Estate, while Neeleman's cooking videos evoke an even more industrious Martha Stewart, who follows her on Instagram (viewers can try their luck at home with Ballerina Farm's $89 sourdough kit). TikTok especially has given Ballerina Farms instant access to a global fandom, most of whom have no intention of milking their own cows. Los Angeles is the top city for e-commerce orders, while 62.5 percent of Hannah's social media followers are outside the United States, according to Daniel Neeleman. ADVERTISEMENT Hustle Agriculture As avid followers know, the Neelemans married three months after their first date, in 2011. Two years later, the twosome were raising goats in Brazil, which sparked the idea for Ballerina Farm 1.0. 'We wanted the farm to make money; we wanted to be able to support ourselves,' said Hannah Neeleman. Daniel left his job as a director at Vigzul, a home security company started by his father, JetBlue founder David Neeleman, and by 2017, the couple was raising pigs in Utah. They turned to social media to promote their new artisanal meat business, gaining a niche following of customers and fellow farmers. 'When we were first starting [on] Instagram, we had a lot of homesteaders that followed us, because we were really in the thick of building things — our first milk cows and building chicken coops,' said Hannah Neeleman. But it wasn't until the pandemic that she became a mainstream success. 'I remember not more than a week going by when someone was like, 'You're exploding on TikTok,'' she said of the account that is now up to 9.8 million followers. Her Instagram following, which was at 443,000 in January 2022, grew to 8.3 million by January 2024. Media attention raised her profile even more. A viral July 2024 profile of her life in the UK's Sunday Times was followed by appearances in The New York Times, Glamour and other publications. (Neeleman hasn't welcomed all of the attention, calling the Sunday Times profile an 'attack' in a video posted shortly after it ran). Each piece sparked a firestorm of online discussion, as audiences obsessed over her life path and marriage, which ballooned into broader debates about whether her content implicitly supported 'tradwife' ideology, especially after she was featured in a 59-page spread in Evie, a publication aimed at conservative women. A representative said the feature 'was not intended as a political statement.' ADVERTISEMENT All that attention and world-building elevates Neeleman to a category of fame beyond social media influencers, and into the realm of mass-market celebrities, said James Nord, founder of influencer marketing agency Fohr. The logical next step would be a reality show. Daniel Neeleman says they've been offered 'dozens' of opportunities, but haven't signed onto one yet. 'Never say never,' he said. The Simple Life The day before the store preview, Hannah Neeleman led a tour of her family's newly built 150-cow dairy. She discussed the finer points of manure collection (she said a robotic 'manure roomba' gathers it), shared her views on the virtues of raw milk and described the best type of feed for optimising cream content. The Neelemans produce a portion of what they sell, and they refer to Ballerina Farm's brand ethos as 'close living' — sourcing locally and homeschooling their children to help on the farm. As demand has grown, so has their supply chain. The handmade soap is made by a neighbour; the protein powder sources whey from Ireland. 'We're limited; we're a small farm,' said Daniel Neeleman. 'We have to lean on other farms to help supply us.' Even as they expand into product categories like wellness that can be shipped internationally in large quantities, there remain 'products that we'll probably never be able to scale, and we love that,' said Hannah Neeleman. One of the main ones: their raw milk, which can't be sold outside their own store, per health regulations. The brand's website says customers need to sign a waiver to buy it, and a required disclaimer on the vintage-style bottles warns that it 'can be unsafe.' The success of the brand hinges on how many followers tuning into Ballerina Farm out of aspiration, drama — or the combination of both — will end up placing orders for products. The Neelemans, meanwhile, remain practical about their ambitions. 'We're not trying to go public. We're not trying to franchise. We're not trying to be in every gas station and every grocery store,' said Daniel Neeleman. 'That isn't really what makes us excited. We like to keep things small and special, and that's kind of where we're at right now.'
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Meet the man who can't stop founding budget airlines
COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS, Utah—Executives at discount carrier Breeze Airways were recently plotting ways to shorten the time planes spend idling at airport gates. Founder David Neeleman immediately thought of seat belts. After passengers deplane, cleaning crews' tasks include picking up dangling seat belt buckles and crisscrossing them on the seats. It's an industry standard. It also drives Neeleman crazy. Disney's New 'Snow White' Movie Is Making Pretty Much Everyone Mad Boeing Beat Lockheed Martin for the Pentagon's Jet Fighter Contract. Here's What to Know. The Warship That Shows Why the U.S. Navy Is Falling Behind China Four Tax Tips I Tell My Children—When They'll Listen Meet the Former Tesla Die-Hards Now Selling Their Shares 'I'm like, 'Why are we crossing?' ' Neeleman said. 'Because then [to] sit down, you have to uncross it.' His bigger point: Were there ways to minimize turnaround times that Breeze hadn't yet thought of? Executives consulted employees and returned with ideas Breeze implemented to save valuable minutes: sometimes using sweepers instead of large vacuums, lining up departing passengers in the jetbridge early, asking arriving passengers to do a bit of their own cleanup before they get off the plane. And yes, the airline stopped crossing some seat belts on flights that are tightly scheduled back-to-back. 'He throws crazy ideas out there just to get people thinking of, 'Well, what can we do?' ' said Fiona Kiesel, Breeze's chief guest officer. A college dropout, Neeleman is the founder of five airlines, including JetBlue, in the U.S., Canada and Brazil. He's used the same playbook every time: Avoid competing with the big airlines, provide a distinctive service and do everything possible to keep costs low. That approach has helped the 65-year-old forge a decadeslong career in an industry that's intensely competitive, tightly regulated and infamously difficult to turn a profit in. 'There's a lot more people that have lost money in this business than have made money,' Neeleman said. Neeleman is counting on his strategy to help Breeze thrive at a time when the budget-airline model is under threat. The biggest airlines have expanded their own bargains, catering to a broader range of fliers and matching what smaller or budget carriers can offer. In 2024, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines were responsible for about 75% of the U.S. industry's profits, while many regional and low-cost carriers struggled. Budget airlines have been scrambling to figure out how to become more upscale, embracing the sort of comfort-on-a-budget strategy Neeleman has long espoused. Spirit Airlines last week emerged from bankruptcy, while jettisoning some typical budget-airline trappings. Frontier has floated a merger with Spirit, so far unsuccessfully. Southwest, which pioneered many aspects of the discount-airline blueprint, has been abandoning signature elements of its identity as it adds premium seating options and charges for checked bags. Breeze began flying in 2021, and it's still an upstart. For some time Ballerina Farm, the ranch and viral social-media account run by Neeleman's daughter-in-law, Hannah Neeleman, was more profitable, he said. The airline reported its first full quarter of operating profit at the end of 2024 and has been growing steadily, now serving 70 cities with more than 280 routes. Former and current colleagues say Neeleman's font of ideas strays from industry norms. Sometimes they break through, like when JetBlue, which Neeleman launched in 1998, became one of the first to offer live TV for all passengers. Other times he floats untested concepts because he can envision the goal but hasn't worked out how best to achieve it yet. 'He needs people to play tennis with,' said John Rodgerson, chief executive of Brazil-based Azul Airlines, another Neeleman creation. 'He's bouncing ideas, and you're bouncing back.' Neeleman got his start in business at age 9, standing on a milk crate to work the register at his grandfather's Salt Lake City convenience store. His infatuation with flying dates back earlier—a plane adorned his birthday cake when he turned 3. Neeleman sold travel packages as a student at the University of Utah, and later helped organize charter flights. Every Neeleman airline began when he spotted a hole in the market. When he launched Morris Air in 1984, Neeleman connected Utahns to the West Coast and tourist destinations like Hawaii. WestJet offered low-cost flights that linked previously unserved Canadian cities. With JetBlue, John F. Kennedy International Airport didn't have a domestic, low-cost airline. Executives used to say they competed only with customers' cars, or their couches. Azul introduced air service for millions of Brazilians who didn't have it. With Breeze, it is connecting U.S. cities that had lost nonstop service. Among the airline's direct routes: Erie, Pa., to Tampa, Fla.; Montrose, Colo., to Orange County, Calif.; and South Bend, Ind., to Ogdensburg, N.Y. Morris was eventually acquired by Southwest; his four other airlines are still operating. In Neeleman's view, competing head-to-head with the industry giants is a losing game. Speaking at a Breeze flight-attendant training session in mid-February, Neeleman wrote two numbers on a whiteboard: 90% and 86%. The first figure reflected the percentage of routes where Spirit overlaps with other airlines. 'They are in bankruptcy,' he said. (Spirit exited chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month). The second was the percentage of nonstop routes where Breeze has no competition—a figure that has now ticked up to 87%. 'You aren't just doing what everybody else is doing,' he said in an interview. Another big part of his strategy is finding ways to do it cheaper. When launching Morris Air, his first airline, Neeleman opted to serve Costco's humongous chocolate-chip muffins—low cost and perfect for Morris Air's many morning flights, said Michael Lazarus, an investor in four of Neeleman's airlines. Neeleman launched JetBlue with entirely leather seats after sitting on a wet cloth seat on another airline (he suspected the previous occupant had urinated). The move was an industry first, though JetBlue switched to cheaper imitation leather soon after. When JetBlue introduced its first cross-country flight, the best meal option within Neeleman's strict $1-a-customer budget was a bagel with turkey and cheese and a Tootsie Roll, according to Amy Curtis-McIntyre, a former Breeze board member and then JetBlue's chief marketing officer. Instead, executives decided to serve the usual chips and cookies, explaining that the airline had invested in new planes with live TV and low fares—while reminding fliers to bring their own food. Neeleman has had a firsthand look at how big airlines operate. After selling Morris Air to Southwest in 1994, he stayed on as an executive, helping change Southwest's peak-pricing model, implementing electronic ticketing, and revamping their 1-800 number to save money. Herb Kelleher, the late Southwest founder and then CEO, told Neeleman he'd made three years' worth of adjustments in five months. 'He was a bull in a china shop,' said Lazarus, his investor. Neeleman was impetuous, which he attributes in part to his ADHD. Meetings dragged on while he thought there was a simple solution. He'd repeatedly write 'DSAW'—don't say a word—to himself to avoid blurting out thoughts. It didn't work. Kelleher told Neeleman that even his biggest supporters thought he'd been too disruptive, and he was fired. Neeleman said he got bored at JetBlue too, and was ousted as CEO in 2007 after an operations meltdown and disagreements over the way the company was being run. At Breeze headquarters, Neeleman wanders the halls, chatting with employees as he hunts for beef-jerky strips and other low-carb snacks. Wandering around has long been part of Neeleman's management style. He used to make the short trip from JetBlue's New York office to JFK a few times a week to load baggage, scan boarding passes and play basketball with ramp agents. Neeleman said he's more open to feedback than before. He wanted to deploy 36 first-class seats because Breeze's plane configuration let it create premium seating at a lower cost than competitors. Others, including Chief Commercial Officer Lukas Johnson, persuaded him to settle for 12 seats. 'I just trusted those guys to know better,' he said. When Breeze had trouble retaining pilots initially, Neeleman began holding weekly meetings to understand the problem. He also gave his cellphone number to the airline's nearly 600 pilots, who can text him. Retention improved, said Trey Urbahn, a former JetBlue and Azul executive who's now a Breeze board member. 'He'll talk to the CEO,' said Rodgerson, reflecting on Neeleman's democratic approach to management. 'But he'll also talk to the guy cleaning the bathroom.' Write to Roshan Fernandez at Federal Reserve Posted Loss of $77.6 Billion in 2024 How an Electrical Fire Shut Down Heathrow and Upended Global Air Travel Google's Cybersecurity Deal Spins Tiny Investment Into $4 Billion Windfall How Much Do You Know About Online Romance Scams? Take Our Quiz to Find Out Musk Tells Tesla Workers: Don't Sell Your Shares
