Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society

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Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society The Tony Jannus Society recognizes individuals who have made an outstanding achievement in the commercial aviation industry. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida.

Since 1964, the Tony Jannus Award has recognized extraordinary accomplishments in the field of commercial aviation. Given annually by the Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society, the award perpetuates the legacy of the world's first scheduled commercial airline, initiated and piloted by Tony Jannus on January 1, 1914 between St. The Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society also promotes and provides financial support to students enrolled in college level courses leading to a degree in fields related to potential careers in scheduled commercial aviation at colleges and universities.

Thank you to RS&H for being a Benoist Sponsor at our upcoming Tony Jannus Awards!
09/18/2026

Thank you to RS&H for being a Benoist Sponsor at our upcoming Tony Jannus Awards!

Thank you to HNTB for being a Benoist Sponsor at our upcoming Tony Jannus Awards honoring Steven Udvar-Hazy and our ama...
09/15/2026

Thank you to HNTB for being a Benoist Sponsor at our upcoming Tony Jannus Awards honoring Steven Udvar-Hazy and our amazing Tony Jannus high school, college and aviation trade school scholars!

Special shoutout to two of our newest Emeriti board members! Alison Hoefler and Elizabeth Bradley. have been involved wi...
09/14/2026

Special shoutout to two of our newest Emeriti board members! Alison Hoefler and Elizabeth Bradley. have been involved with the Society for many years and we recently voted them into Emeriti status!

Thank you to AVCON, INC. for being a Benoist Sponsor at our upcoming Tony Jannus Awards on November 19th!
09/09/2026

Thank you to AVCON, INC. for being a Benoist Sponsor at our upcoming Tony Jannus Awards on November 19th!

Thank you to TLC Engineering Solutions for being a Benoist Sponsor at our upcoming Tony Jannus Awards!
09/01/2026

Thank you to TLC Engineering Solutions for being a Benoist Sponsor at our upcoming Tony Jannus Awards!

Thank you to Tampa International Airport for hosting and to ADK Consulting & Executive Search for sponsoring lunch for o...
08/31/2026

Thank you to Tampa International Airport for hosting and to ADK Consulting & Executive Search for sponsoring lunch for our August board meeting!

Tony Jannus Awards is on Nov 19th in Tampa and we are honoring Steven Udvar-Hazy, the pioneer of commercial aircraft leasing!

https://tonyjannus.com/awards

08/29/2026

David Neeleman was born in São Paulo and grew up in Utah. School was a problem from the start. He couldn't concentrate, couldn't sit still, and tests were a nightmare. He dropped out of the University of Utah and went to work.

He was 24 when he co-founded his first airline, Morris Air, out of Salt Lake City with a travel agency owner named June Morris. He ran it like nobody else was running airlines. He built the industry's first electronic ticketing system, doing away with paper tickets entirely, and he let reservation agents work from home years before anyone called that normal.

In 1993 Southwest bought Morris Air for $130 million. Neeleman was 33, walked away with roughly $22 million, and got a job at the airline he admired more than any other.

He lasted five months.

Herb Kelleher took him to dinner and told him it wasn't working. Neeleman had tried to change too much too fast, and by Kelleher's own account he was driving people crazy. Worse, the sale came with a non-compete that barred him from working for any US airline for five years.

Around this time his parents took his youngest brother to a doctor to find out why he couldn't focus. The answer was ADHD. His mother suspected David had it too and sent him a book. He read it and recognized himself.

He has said since that ADHD makes him a bad employee and a good entrepreneur.

He spent the non-compete years helping start WestJet in Canada, where the clause didn't apply, and turning his old ticketing system into a company he later sold to Hewlett-Packard. When the five years ran out, he launched JetBlue.

It worked. Leather seats, live TV, low fares, crews people actually liked. And when it started making money, Neeleman set his own salary at $200,000, which for an airline CEO is almost nothing, and donated all of it, plus his bonus, to a fund for crew members hit by disasters. His employees matched him out of their own paychecks. He refused stock options entirely, saying it would be hoggish to take them when he already had shares. In the early years he flew in the last row, in the seats that don't recline.

Asked why, he said it mattered to his people to have a CEO who wasn't trying to suck the company dry.

He was pushed out of JetBlue in 2007 after an ice storm stranded thousands of passengers. He went to Brazil and built Azul. Then he came back and built Breeze Airways.

Five airlines. He is 66 and still running one.

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P. O. Box 21071
Tampa, FL
33622

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