In an industry plagued by bankruptcy, JetBlue Airways has grown revenues threefold during the four years since its launch. Smart cost containment is part of the story, but perhaps just as important is its down-to-earth culture, which inspires unusual customer and employee loyalty. Here JetBlue CEO and founder David Neeleman talks about the inspiration for the airline’s culture and how it plays out day-to-day. Where does JetBlue’s egalitarian culture come from? The way I live my life and run this company are colored by a couple of realizations I had more than 20 years ago. Throughout high school, I was an undistinguished student. So, after a year at the University of Utah, I decided to go on a mission for my church and ended up living and working in the favelas, or slums, of Brazil. My dad was a journalist. We lived in Brazil until I was five, and we visited during summers after that. Brazil was divided between haves and have-nots, and as I was growing up I saw only the rich part of the country—the part with the big houses and the country clubs. On my mission, though, I suddenly found myself on the other side of the barbed wire fence, with people who were desperately poor. It was the kind of place where, after you’d been out walking around all day, your shoes smelled like human feces. Living in the favelas, a few things struck me. The first was that most wealthy people had a huge sense of entitlement. They thought they were better than the people in the slums—and this rubbed me the wrong way. The second was that the poor people I met seemed happier than the rich, and they were also incredibly generous in sharing what little they had. And the third—and most striking—thing was that I was actually much happier, too. Objectively, this made no sense. I was a young guy, far away from my family, only allowed to write letters home once a week and call home twice a year. In that situation, I should’ve been miserable. But I wasn’t because I got enormous pleasure and satisfaction from my work. When my time in Brazil was up, I went for my exit interview, and the interviewer said something I’ve never forgotten. “David,” he told me, “when you go back to your life in the U.S., everything you do will be for you. You’ll be in school for yourself, earning money for yourself, and so on. And you’re never going to be as content as you were here unless you feel like you’re serving—like you’re helping other people.” That nugget of wisdom was incredibly powerful: It resonated with me then, and it continues to resonate with me today. How do you translate this worldview into action? Two insights from that experience drive how I manage JetBlue: For myself and for the people I work with, I try to eliminate obvious differences in wealth and status, and I try to provide opportunities to serve others. Let’s say I go on a business trip. Lincoln Town Car? No, thanks—just give me the standard midsize rental. At JetBlue, we have no reserved parking, and the coffee in the kitchen down the hall from my work space is the same kind we have in the employee lounge out at Kennedy. We have only one class on our planes, and the seats that have more legroom are at the back, so the people who get off the plane last actually have nicer seats in-flight. The desk and chair I’ve got in my office are the same kinds as the ones used by everyone else in this office. As I tell my pilots: There are people who make more money at this company than others, but that doesn’t mean you should flaunt it. What about serving others? This week, I’m flying to Florida for work, and on the way down and back I’ll serve drinks and snacks along with the crew and take out the garbage when we’re done. It’s a chance to serve the customer directly. On a much larger scale, we run what we call the JetBlue Crewmember Crisis Fund; everyone gives money to it, and it’s used to help employees in crisis. If someone at JetBlue gets cancer, they have health benefits, sure, but they might need money to pay for a babysitter while Mom’s at chemotherapy. When employees know they’re coming to a great job where they get full benefits—and that if something terrible happens to them the other employees will help them out—they do their best work, and they serve their customers well.
