Introduction 1
CHAPTER 1 The Journey Begins 7
CHAPTER 2 Have I Got a Deal for You 23
CHAPTER 3 Morris Air Spreads Its Wings 39
CHAPTER 4 Off to Southwest 55
CHAPTER 5 Opening Up New Skies 73
CHAPTER 6 A Different Kind of Airline 85
CHAPTER 7 Preparing for Departure 103
CHAPTER 8 JetBlue Takes Flight 121
CHAPTER 9 Making Air Travel Entertaining 139
CHAPTER 10 Keeping Customers Happy 151
CHAPTER 11 The Technology Advantage 163
CHAPTER 12 Getting the Word Out in Style 177
CHAPTER 13 Dealing with Disaster 193
CHAPTER 14 Preserving the Culture 213
CHAPTER 15 Looking to the Future 225
CHAPTER 16 David Neeleman’s Rules for Succeeding in Any Business 243
JetBlue Timeline 255
Acknowledgments 263
Notes 265
Index 289
David Neeleman is much more than one of today’s most accomplished aviation executives. Throughout an incredible career that began with selling Hawaiian timeshare vacation packages as a college student and ultimately led to the creation of JetBlue, Neeleman has demonstrated an uncanny ability to identify and fill unmet needs by building niche businesses. Flying High is a straightforward, illuminating account of David Neeleman’s life and the principles by which he has created his highly profitable travel empire–rules that can be applied to virtually any business in almost every industry.
James Wynbrandt is a New York—based author and award-winning aviation and business reporter. He is a regular contributor to numerous high-profile aviation publications, including Smithsonian Air and Space, Plane & Pilot, General Aviation News, Avionics News, and Pilot Journal. A licensed pilot, Wynbrandt has been following JetBlue since the company’s founding. His articles on business and aviation have also appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Management Review, Computer and Electronics Marketing, Flying, and Aspen Magazine, among others.
As veteran airlines writer James Wynbrandt shows in his excellent
new book, Flying High, it took JetBlue's hyperkinetic free spirit
David Neeleman to extend the revolution started by Southwest's Herb
Kelleher into a heady new frontier—by putting the discounters in a
nose-to-nose rivalry with the major carriers. A devout Mormon with
nine children, Neeleman, from Salt Lake City, learned about
customer service as a kid on a milk crate in his grandfather's
convenience store. When customers demanded a product his granddad
didn't have, young David would bolt out the back door to Safeway to
buy it. After a stint as a missionary in Brazil, Neeleman—a college
dropout with ADD—started a travel agency, a charter airline to
Hawaii, and a low-cost carrier called Morris Air, which he sold to
Southwest. After just five months, Kelleher fired Neeleman, who'd
barge into meetings and loudly lecture Southwest's proud managers
on where their airline was screwing up.
By the time he founded JetBlue in 1999, Neeleman had already
pioneered many of the boldest innovations in aviation, including
e-ticketing, automatic ticket machines, and at-home reservation
staffs. Backed by farsighted investors, among them George Soros,
JetBlue busted the biggest myth in airlines by proving that a
low-cost carrier can also beat the majors on service. While
Wynbrandt clearly idolizes Neeleman as a curious blend of saint and
gladiator, his idol does deserve our gratitude. It took this
hyperactive dreamer to put a fresh face on a tired industry, to
show at long last that customers, not old-line carriers, are
charting the future of commercial aviation. (Fortune, June 28,
2004)
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