Jetblue's Position and Potential

JetBlue: Fighting for a Bigger Slice of the Pie in the Sky In the highly competitive commercial air travel business, earning a profit and earning the loyalty of customers generally go hand in glove. And as to profit, airlines that offer the most destinations and the most customer perks, snacks, and promotions are not necessarily the most profitable.

JetBlue has a mountain to climb to be able to compete head-to-head with the dominant companies -- American Airlines, Delta, and Southwest -- but the #5-ranked airline is gearing up to expand its services, its destinations, and it is launching strategies that could place it higher in the airline pecking order.

This paper reviews JetBlue's merger options and potential partners, its entrance into the retail apparel market, its expansion opportunities, its quest to find and train highly skilled marketing talent, and its crusade to transcend the ordinary commercial flight into a uniquely interesting and high quality experience the traveling public prefers.

The new mission statement for JetBlue is "To become a top 4 airline in the United States, differentiated by exceptional customer service." The new vision statement will be "JetBlue will lead the renaissance in American air travel, restoring the industry to the days when people looked forward to flying." The mission statement is specific with respect to market share, and geographic scope, and it also provides a pathway for how JetBlue hopes to get there.

Service is one area where an airline can be truly differentiated, and while JetBlue is also a low cost airline, it knows that delivering great customer service improves brand loyalty, and often does not cost that much extra. The vision statement is bold -- and visionary -- and can be inspirational in nature. By tapping into the forgotten romance of air travel, both customers and employees can be inspired by this vision. The vision also ties into the mission statement quite well, because service really defined that era.

Background Organization JetBlue was founded by David Neeleman in 1998 as a low-cost airline focused on passenger travel; the company began servicing customers in early 2000. The company's original strategy provided customers with discounted prices, superior customer service, sensibly priced upgrades and free satellite television. JetBlue's operations focused on routes with direct point service originating or arriving in either, New York, Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Orlando and Puerto Rico. The point-to-point service attracts customers with the highly desirable non-stop flight itineraries, which provides more options geared towards business and leisure travelers.

The company's primary hub airport is New York's John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) and company's headquarters is located in Long Island, New York. Due to JetBlue's success in offering low-cost pricing and exceptional customer service, the company has quickly escalated to the.