It’s a tense time for airlines. Consumers are increasingly weary of poor customer service experiences, Boeing’s horrifying safety failures The events of recent years continue to resonate in the public consciousness.
For David Neeleman, who founded JetBlue 25 years ago and now runs Breeze Airways, the string of recent air crashes does not invalidate broader safety gains made in air travel.
“Flying on a 737 Max is incredibly safe, it’s incredibly safe,” Neeleman said Wednesday in Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference in Park City, Utah. “It’s really hard to think of the last time Americans had an accident in a large transport plane… It’s been so long.”
Neeleman, CEO and founder of Breeze Airways CEO, is a firm believer in the airline industry despite its many challenges. Founded by Neeleman in 2018, Breeze is that rare thing: a new low-cost airline. Breeze focuses on smaller cities and about 90% of its routes have no direct competition.
The company is looking to solve some of the airline industry’s most glaring customer service problems. At Brainstorm Tech, Neeleman told the audience that Breeze currently cancels fewer than one in 1,000 flights and aims to be the “most on-time” airline. (The company is currently hiring a new chief customer officer, he added.)
One advantage that didn’t exist when Neeleman founded JetBlue in 1999 is AI, which the Breeze CEO believes will play a role in the future of air travel.
“I think AI will play a major role in how our aircraft operate, for better fuel economy and predictive maintenance,” he said. “We’ll be able to predict more quickly when parts are going to fail, which will allow us to reduce cancellations and have more connected apps that understand you and know you better… I think AI will radically change the customer experience, make it better, we’ll communicate better with our customers and reduce our marketing costs.”
But ultimately, it all comes down to safety. And Neeleman knows that fears about air travel don’t exist in a vacuum, telling Fortune moderator and senior reporter Jessica Mathews, “Obviously, I can’t dismiss people like you and everybody else, but it’s really not an issue,” he said. “But safety is our number one value.”
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