Jet Blue - another success story

Filed in archive Global Economy on August 18, 2004

Source: www.hangar.no


We had Ryanair here some weeks ago - now Fast Company has a bullish article on Jetblue:

"And Neeleman has an even grander flight plan for JetBlue: He aims to vault his startup airline into the ranks of the majors, with 290 planes and 25,000 employees within seven years. Although it hit almost $1 billion in revenue last year, JetBlue is still tiny compared with American Airlines, with $17.4 billion, or United, with $13.7 billion, or delta, with $13.3 billion. And for all its meteoric growth, JetBlue still operates just 220 flights to 23 destinations a day. Compare that with industry leader American's 4,200 daily flights to 250 cities in 40 countries. Now JetBlue is about to embark on a steep climb: In the next 12 months, it expects to hire between 1,700 and 1,800 employees. It's introducing a new plane every three weeks -- and next year will be adding one every 10 days, including a second type of aircraft."

While I naturally admire the success story of JetBlue I dislike the glorifying of the simple things in the article. "Only the paranoid survives...., Actions speak louder than words..., Competition is the ultimate motivation...., Employees have to understand the business" is much blabla and in any way are the basics any entrepreneur should follow through. It's surely not the secret success formula for entrepreneurs with an edge...

Thanks Oliver!