Jet Blue Vs. The Rest

7 Pages 1756 Words

Jet BlueVs. The Rest

Tim Beran
BA 311 Marketing


If you’re looking for a shaky industry these days, and throughout history for that matter, you really need look no further than the airlines. Since September 11th, we have seen two of the Major Airlines in this country file for bankruptcy, and a third came extremely close. Respectively these would be United, USAIR, and American. The remainder of the major airlines are struggling as well. In the midst of this there are two airlines that seem to be making gains off of others losses. These would be Southwest, and Jet Blue. Since Southwest is off limits, the focus of this paper will be on Jet Blue. How is it that this young airline can do so well while the veterans of the industry are struggling to survive? There are many reasons, but let’s focus on Marketing.
Let’s begin with the four P’s of the Marketing Mix. Product, price, place, and promotion. What do airlines do? The basic function from the beginning has been to get people from point A to point B. Of course all of the airlines do this, but it is how they do it that sets Jet Blue apart from the rest. It has become the “norm” lately that most of the time that you get on a flight you can count on being cramped in a small seat with little room to move, poor and/or unfriendly service, and a bag of pretzels for nourishment. This unfortunately is the “product” that most airlines are offering to their customers. To me, I’ve always felt that this would be one of the easier things to deal with, and that is exactly what Jet Blue has tried to do from the start. The airline operates a brand new fleet of Airbus A320’s. Here is their fleet information from jetblue.com:
• 57 Airbus A320 aircraft , all powered by International Aero Engines (IAE) V2500 engines
• Jetblue has orders with Airbus for a fleet of as many as 202 A320 aircraft and has placed an order with Embraer for a fleet of up to 200 EM...