Jetblue Airlines' Success Story

Returning to the USA, he took up a career in sales, selling condominiums in Hawaii. To boost his business, he started his own travel agency by chartering flights to transport prospective clients to the Hawaiian islands. Neeleman was a hard-seller who even tried to push honeymoon packages onto couples during their weddings. His reputation as a salesman caught the attention of June Morris, who owned one of Utah's largest travel agencies. Together they started a Utah-based charter operation in 1984 called Morris Air. Neeleman modeled Morris Air on the lines of Southwest Airlines¹ (Southwest) run by his idol Herb Kelleher. He took ideas from Southwest and tried to improve on them. He adopted a strategy of keeping costs low to increase margins by turning around² the planes quickly and having reservationists work from home to save office rentals.

Herb Kelleher, impressed with the airline's low cost, high revenues strategy, offered to take it over. Southwest bought Morris Air for $129 million. Neeleman gained $22 million from this sale and went to work at Southwest as an executive vice president. This arrangement, however, did not work out. Neeleman, accustomed to running his own airline, was unable to adjust to working in a team. Within a year, he split ways with Southwest. Before he could leave, Kelleher made him sign a non-compete agreement, which would be valid for five years. Neeleman then moved to Canada, where he co-founded a discount airline called West Jet. He also fine-tuned the online reservations system he developed at Morris Air, called it Open Skies and sold it to Hewlett-Packard³ in 1999, for a reported $22 million...