JetBlue Airways

Founded in 1998 and commenced in 2000, JetBlue Airways Corporation is a low-cost commercial carrier the 5th largest airline in the United States. The company controls its operations through the headquarters located in the neighborhood of New York in Long Island City. It also has a corporate office in Utah's Cottonwood Heights with its major base at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. It serves air travel facilities in the United States, South America, Latin America and the Caribbean with a total of ninety-two destinations.

Based on the working lines of a typical low-cost airline like Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways makes itself slightly different in its business strategy by adding in-flight amenities such as Live TV for every passenger, satellite radio and complimentary snacks and drinks free of charge. Its founder David Neelaman and other executives are former employees of Southwest Airlines and initially came up with the name, "NewAir" for the company. They planned on to call it a Taxi and thereby decided to have a yellow colored livery but due to its ambiguous meaning and the objection from their investor JP Morgan in its initial funding, they had to quit this idea.

Looking at the financial performance, during the 9/11 financial crisis that inflicted upon airline industry, JetBlue Airways was among the few that earned profit. However, in 2005 the company suffered with significant financial losses due to soared fuel rates. Moreover, with its low fares and in-flight additional frills, the company had a poor financial performance.

Nevertheless, JetBlue continued with its growth plan with the order of thirty-six airplanes in 2006. In addition, as a cost-cutting strategy, it removed a whole row of seats from all of their A320s and reduced crew size. This helped in reduced aircraft weight thereby resulting in less fuel requirement. The company was hit by another crisis in 2007 due to snowstorms in the region that led to the cancellation of most of their flights.

In the subsequent years, JetBlue recovered from the losses and continued to grow by making partnerships with 20^th Fox Century Films and Hollywood businessman Montgomery Burns as a part of their marketing strategy.

Fleet

The JetBlue Airways has a fleet of 213 aircrafts that will be joined by 116 more aircrafts scheduled for delivery in 2016. The fleet consists of one hundred and thirty in-service Airbus A320 of 150 passenger seats, sidty in-service Embraer 190 with 100 passenger seats and twenty-three Airbus A321 aircrafts with single and two-class configurations.

JetBlue defines travelling in A321 in two ways – Core JetBlue experience and Trans-continental experience. In the former, the aircraft has three-by-three seat configuration with 190 passenger seats of which few have more space. All seats are customized for more comfort and convenience then those in the regular low-cost airlines. In the latter, you get to experience the likes of those in first class and business class of the high-cost airlines. Apart from 143 passenger seats for the Core JetBlue experience, 16 are configured as superior mint cabin interiors with enhanced services and amenities. It provides super-comfy seats that they call as Sweet Seats. These seats are lie-flat with more space and more legroom; air cushions and a massage feature. Four of the sixteen mint cabins have closeable doors for more privacy.