Success Quote by David Neeleman

Value and safety: two words that used to live in different columns, now fused into a single consumer demand. David Neeleman, the airline entrepreneur who built brands by selling a friendlier kind of efficiency, is signaling a post-innocence market. The line is short, almost casual, but it’s doing heavy persuasive work: it normalizes a new hierarchy of priorities and quietly announces that the industry can no longer treat safety as a baseline and price as the differentiator. Safety has become part of the pricing conversation, and value has become a moral argument.

The specific intent is pragmatic. Neeleman isn’t delivering a philosophical statement; he’s setting expectations for how customers will shop and how companies must compete. “On top of everyone’s lists now” implies a before-and-after moment: a shock to public trust (think 9/11-era aviation anxiety, later amplified by high-profile crashes, security theater, and pandemics). “Right along with safety” is the rhetorical twist. It suggests that bargain-hunting won’t disappear under fear; instead, people will demand reassurance without surrendering their skepticism about cost.

The subtext flatters the consumer as rational and resilient: we can be cautious and still refuse to be gouged. It also pressures the industry. If safety is being explicitly weighed, then any failure becomes not just tragedy but a brand verdict. Neeleman is effectively arguing that the winners will be the companies that can translate invisible protections into visible, purchasable “value” without making customers feel like they’re paying a surcharge for basic duty of care.