Word: neeleman
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...Eero Saarinen for T.W.A. in 1962 - was created by the San Francisco-based architectural firm Gensler. It was a collaboration launched by chance when Art Gensler, the firm's chairman, missed his flight home and ended up on a JetBlue flight to California with the airline's founder, David Neeleman. (Neeleman is known for hopping random JetBlue flights and handing out peanuts to passengers). "Nothing is more nerve-wracking," says Gensler's Bill Hooper, chief architect of the Terminal 5 project, "than having your boss hand you [David Neeleman's] card and saying, 'Make something happen...
...theory, JetBlue could use the same technology to allow passengers to use their mobile phones in flight, but the airline has mercifully decided against it. (Not so in Europe, where regulators approved in-flight mobile service this summer.) "People don't want that," says JetBlue founder and chairman David Neeleman. "Half of them hating it is too big a risk...
...Neeleman said he had been asking JetBlue's engineers about using his BlackBerry on their planes for years, thinking it should be pretty simple. Not only was connectivity more complicated than he thought, it was also extremely costly to create the software needed for full Web browsing. So instead, they came up with the idea of limited access for passengers, partnering with Yahoo and Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry. "If we just give people e-mail, that would solve 90% of the problem and would be one-tenth of the cost," Neeleman says. Full Web access would have...
...time Neeleman was assembling JetBlue, he had already launched three airlines, including Morris Air, which he sold to Southwest, and WestJet in Canada. Forced by a non-compete clause with Southwest to stay on the sidelines, he spent years figuring out JetBlue. He raised a ton of capital so he could weather any early storms or cut-throat price wars. He bought brand new Airbus A320s to give customers confidence; he equipped them with satellite TVs and gave you enough seat room so that you could open a newspaper without slapping the passenger next to you. He ran the company...
...like Neeleman - constantly thinking of new ideas, doing the what-if stuff, puzzling over overseas expansion - becomes less useful as CEO when it's more important to know exactly how many crewmembers you need in Miami next week, or whether you are sufficiently hedged on fuel costs. So as chairman of the board, make that non-executive chairman, he'll have more time to figure out ways of improving the airline industry. And that could keep a body occupied for years...