How 2 executives started new airlines as aviation's biggest crisis hit

"It's pretty shocking that we actually turned up a new airline on Teams."

As coronavirus concerns decimated the demand for travel and the aviation industry was faced with its biggest crisis in history, two former airline executives were about to do the unthinkable: start an airline. Major U.S. airline CEOs were just trying to stop the bleeding and save their companies, while Andrew Levy, 51, and David Neeleman, 61, were just starting up -- launching the first two new U.S. airlines in more than a decade -- during a global pandemic. They are both betting their low prices and smaller, no-hassle airport destinations will be enough to win over customers during the summer post-lockdown travel surge. Levy described starting Avelo Airlines as an "itch" that he's "wanted scratched for a really long time." It started 27 years ago when he began working with the founders of now-defunct ValuJet.