PHOENIX — Breeze Airways CEO David Neeleman has found success starting airlines by taking a different approach from existing carriers. And onstage on the third day of the Phocuswright Conference, the founder of Morris Air, JetBlue, WestJet and Azul Brazilian Airlines went in a different direction yet again from the rest of the aviation community by calling the push toward sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) "nonsense."
Although he has acknowledged the reality of climate change, he bases his argument on economics. "[IATA director general] Willie Walsh said that if we put SAF on all the airlines in the world it will increase our costs by $187 billion. [Airlines] make $32 billion a year in profit. I'm looking at all these people that are in the industry and thinking, 'You guys are all going to lose your jobs if this nonsense happens.'"
He also argued that a move to SAF would have negative economic impacts on diesel fuel refineries that now supply airlines with jet fuel, and that the airline industry would do better to help other industries get off diesel distillates to increase the supply for airplanes at a more economically advantageous cost.
SAF currently includes agricultural-based products and waste, and Neeleman asserted that if aviation takes what it needs for SAF, "it will definitely affect the food supply. The price for food would go up. People would starve to death."
Other aviation executives, he says, are either victims of "group think" or are afraid of pushback from environmental movements.
"They can't say it. I can say it," he concluded.