JetBlue Airways Corporation, also jetBlue, is a major American airline low cost
passenger carrier, and the sixth largest in the United States by passengers carried.
JetBlue Airways is headquartered in the Long Island City, with its main base at
John F. Kennedy International Airport.
JetBlue operates 254 aircrafts (194-Airbus A320/321, 60-Embraer E190) with over
1,000 flights daily and serves 102 domestic and international network destinations
in the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
JetBlue was incorporated in Delaware in August 1998. David Neeleman founded
the company in February 1999, under the name "NewAir". JetBlue started by
following Southwest's approach of offering low-cost travel, but sought to
distinguish itself by its amenities, such as in-flight entertainment, TV at every seat,
and Sirius XM satellite radio.
The New York-based airline, now valued at more than $5 billion, began flying in
2000 and helped bring affordable civility to America's travelers by offering highquality service and amenities at budget prices.
According to Neeleman, JetBlue came about when he noticed how the
shortcomings of America's major carriers in the late 1990s.
Point-to-point structure is a transportation system in which a plane, bus, or train
travels directly to a destination, rather than going through a central hub. This differs
from the spoke-hub distribution paradigm in which the transportation goes to a
central location where passengers change to another train, bus, or plane to reach
their destination. The point-to-point model is used widely by low cost carriers,
including Allegiant Air and Southwest Airlines in the U.S., and European carriers
such as Ryanair, easyJet and Wizzair.
Hub-and-spoke. A hub is a central airport that flights are routed through, and
spokes are the routes that planes take out of the hub airport. Most major airlines
1
have multiple hubs. They claim that hubs allow them to offer more flights for
passengers.
Three-hour Tarmac Rule. A tarmac delay occurs when an airplane on the ground
is either awaiting takeoff or has just landed and passengers do not have the
opportunity to get off the plane. After a tarmac delay of three hours in the U.S.,
passengers must be given the option to deplane.
The specific weather conditions - winter weather, especially freezing rain, snow
and other icy conditions
Aircraft deicing/anti-icing fluids consist of four types. They are Type I, II, III, and
IV.
Type I fluids are used for deicing or anti-icing, but provide very limited anti-icing
protection.
Type II fluids are designed to remain on the wings of an aircraft during ground
operations, thereby providing anti-icing protection.
Type III fluids are designed for aircraft that have a shorter time to rotation.
Type IV anti-icing fluids meet the same fluid specifications as the Type II fluids
and have a significantly longer holdover time.
Holdover time begins when the final application of deicing/anti-icing fluid
commences and expires when the deicing/anti-icing fluid loses its protection
effectiveness.
Questions
2
1. What is the value proposition of JetBlue? What are its operational
characteristics?
A value proposition can be presented as a business or marketing statement that a
company uses to summarize why a consumer should buy a product or use a service.
In this case, JetBlue offered direct flights connecting large, typically northeastern,
U.S. cities (e.g., New York) with warmer cities in the southeast (e.g., Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida). It developed own operating system as a main strategy. Its
modified point-to-point route structure helped to achieve consistent and sustainable
growth. Unlike other carriers who use hub-and-spoke system, it does not entered
this market but rather focused on direct passengers and maintained five focus cities
(Boston Logan, Fort Lauderdale, New York’s John F. Kennedy, Los Angeles Long
Beach and Orlando Airports), with most of its flights operating into or out of one of
these cities.
As one of these five focus cities, Boston had played a significant role in JetBlue’s
growth strategy to date. Out of Boston, JetBlue offered non-stop service to 33
destinations and connecting service to another 11 destinations.
2. What is the operational impact of de-icing capacity at Logan? How bad was
the problem in 2009-2010?
During the winter of 2009 - 2010, JetBlue performed all of its deicing operations
on-gate, but with 12 active deicers, it was able to release just four flights per hour
under moderate snowfall. As a result, JetBlue faced excessive delays and
cancellations.
From November 2009 through March 2010, JetBlue’s Logan departures faced an
average departure delay of about 10 minutes, with 230 flights canceled
(representing 2.5% of the total schedule).
Each schedule disruption forced JetBlue to apply costly recovery actions to ensure
that aircraft were appropriately positioned for future operations and that crew work
limits were satisfied. Particularly troubling was that in the winter of 2009 - 2010
3
JetBlue had been unable to meet its internal goal of zero cancellations due to light
snow.
3. Under ideal conditions, theoretically, what is the maximum number of
planes per hour that can be processed by four de-icing teams?
Under ideal conditions, de-icing is performed on-gate so for one plane the time
spent would be:
2 minutes- the plane would be pushed back 15 feet from the gate
3 minutes-deicers positioning and the plane configuration
1 minute- deicers pull back from the plane
4 minutes-based on Exhibit 10, the minimal deicing time (minimal 10 minutes of
total deicing time– 6 minutes for above-listed procedures)
So, the total time spent for deicing is 10 minutes. With 4 teams ideally functioning
for 60 minutes (6 planes each team per hour), maximum number of planes per hour
that can be processed is 24.
4