And Now the Hard Part

If there's one airline that serves as a caution-ary tale for JetBlue, it's People Express Airlines. Back in the early 1980s, it revolutionized air travel, offering dirt-cheap fares, preaching customer focus, and priding itself on an energetic staff. Its charismatic and boyish fortysomething founder, Donald Burr, was featured on magazine covers and on TV. The airline reached a billion dollars in annual sales in less than five years. Sound familiar?

Then, at approximately the same point JetBlue finds itself today -- on the verge of becoming big -- People Express stretched too far. Its systems couldn't handle rapidly increasing volume, and it also choked on an acquisition. People Express wound up with a one-way ticket to oblivion just a year later. "I lived it," says Chris Collins, who was a team manager at People Express and is now JetBlue's vice president of systems operations. "For five years, we were the best thing going. A year later, we're [gone] be-cause we couldn't sustain growth. You want to know what keeps me up at night? Figuring out what we're going to need not next year but five years from now."

To get big, JetBlue's team knows, it's sometimes necessary to act big. For instance, Barger understands the processes and tools needed to drive consistency through the operation -- the often mundane details and numbers that seem to elude so many entrepreneurs. Early every morning, he and members of the operations team review the previous day's flights. On Mondays, they review the past week. At their fingertips: things like takeoff and landing times, and when the last bag hit the belt (the goal is no longer than 20 minutes after the plane reaches the gate). "The 45 minutes you wait for your bags is your last impression," Barger says.

The program also produces a list of "focus flights," the 10 worst delays, which the team deconstructs. Since people have such low expectations of low-fare carriers, Barger says, JetBlue wants to differentiate itself through reliability. Two of the most important performance numbers are the completion rate (the proportion of flights that aren't canceled), in which JetBlue led the industry last year, and on-time arrivals, in which it ranked second.

One of the latest tools designed to help JetBlue as it grows is an "operational recovery system." During any disruption -- weather that grounds some flights, for example -- it allows planners to select various goals before rerouting planes. No canceled flights or delays beyond three hours? The software produces a solution and calculates its cost. It factors in each plane's maintenance and fuel needs, and the flight crew's experience and availability within FAA rules. With the current fleet of 57 planes, the program is a perk. Down the road, with 100 or more planes, it will be indispensable.

As it manages growth, the airline must also standardize many other things it does to avoid starting from scratch every time. For example, JetBlue has developed a checklist of what has to happen whenever it enters a new market. Everyone involved has access to the list on the corporate intranet. Each department sees what has been done, what remains to be done, deadlines, problems. Currently, the checklist makes launches that occur months apart more predictable. But before too long, it'll make simultaneous launches, unthinkable early on, manageable.

These efforts also improve efficiency, which will be critical in the years ahead as JetBlue tries to offset rising costs for aging planes and more-senior employees. And low costs remain an obsession. JetBlue's reservation agents, for example, work from home rather than in an expensive call center. At the same time, Neeleman is looking to widen profit margins again. A new 100-seat regional jet fleet being added next year will tap relatively uncontested -- and so more profitable -- markets.

In many ways, the question of whether JetBlue can do all this -- grow and standardize and automate -- while still preserving its personal touch comes down to this: Can Neeleman be scaled?

He's certainly trying tonight. As the plane heads toward Salt Lake City, he works his way down the aisle talking to customers. He meets someone who knows his father. He meets a fellow entrepreneur. For an hour-and-a-half, Neeleman chats and collects business cards. He has an ease with people of all types -- been that way since he worked as a Mormon missionary in Brazil.

In some sense, the plane is his personal focus group. He asks customers what they like and don't like, what the airline should do differently. He jots down suggestions. Almonds, the newest snack, are being introduced in May after passengers asked him for a low-carb item.

Neeleman's real audience, however, is the flight crew. He works alongside them, creating "the JetBlue experience," great service that fosters loyal customers. "I want them to know that I value what they do," he says. "I value it so much that I'm not too good to do it. I fly with 8 to 12 crew-members a week, but the other 1,200 flight attendants know about it."