Crafting and Executing Strategy (JetBlue airlines Case study)

Dollie Wood

Dr. Beazley

Crafting and Executing Strategy (JetBlue airlines Case study)

Introduction

JetBlue Airways is an American low cost airline based in New York City, and home base at the local John F. Kennedy International Airport. JetBlue Airways became part of 1999/2000, for the former employees of Southwest Airlines was founded. JetBlue Airways today is already the fourth largest budget airline in the world. The JetBlue Corporation, which belongs to the NASDAQ, is listed. On 22 January 2008, Lufthansa announced the acquisition of newly issued 42 million shares of JetBlue (George, 2008). This corresponds to a share of 19 percent for a total price of around 300 million U.S. dollars. JetBlue (David Neelman, CEO) has under the company name Azul Linhas Aereas Brasileiras, a new airline based in Sao Paulo, Brazil established. This has commenced service in December 2008 and has since served a growing network of domestic flights within Brazil.

JetBlue is an American lost-cost airline that was founded in 1999 by David Neeleman but was initially named “NewAir”. The headquarters of the company is located in the Forest Hills and the main base of the company is John F. Kennedy International Airport. However, the corporate office of the airline is located in Cottonwood Heights. JetBlue is one of the most successful airlines in the United States and is a four-star airline that serves the passengers with passion. JetBlue faced problems in 2005 due to loss in profits. The company also faced fuel issues as the prices increased and increases in operational costs (DuBrin, 2008). JetBlue was formed by David Neelman with the intent of combining low fares of a discount airline carrier with all types of comfort. Currently, the company is ranked as a four-star airline and a low-cost carrier by Skytrax. Moreover, it is also the only airline in the United States that is ranked higher than three stars. JetBlue uses advertising media and print, online as well as television and social media ads are used too. The company has expanded mainly due to its human resource. There are seven product and services that JetBlue offers to the customers. JetBlue's performance was poor in 2005 mainly due to a loss, raising fuel prices and some internal factors such as cost of maintenance or airplanes and other operational problems.

Jet Blue's strategic intent

The airline was committed to getting its passengers to their destinations despite bad weather. This however, proved false after an ice storm delayed JetBlue's flight boarding passengers for as long as eleven hours. Company's officials explained that JetBlue's philosophy was to delay flights rather than cancel them. After the Feb 2007 ice storm on Airbus A320, a new management took charge of JetBlue's deploring performance (Weiss, 2008). The new management team needs to put in place new operating procedures, communication systems and information technology solutions to prevent another weather related ordeal. In addition, the company paid attention to little details that customers found special such as in leather seats, latest TV screens, in flight yoga ...