JetBlue Airways: Starting from Scratch - Assignment Example

JetBlue Airways Question David Neeleman founded JetBlue Airways in the early 1999 and it is labeled as the best-funded start-up in the history of United State’s aviation. David said that the airline would totally maximize on technology making it bring back humanity to air travel (Gittell and O’Reilly, 2001). To achieve this, the airline would substitute information technology and computers and bring about a paperless airline which sorely used the e-tickets. This would result to more efficiency and the overall service provide to its customers. Being a low-cost airline, it has grown into a huge company making huge profits and a remarkable achievement was it being one of the few US airlines that made profits during the infamous September 11, 2001 attacks that led to a sharp downturn in the airline industry. David, the founder, got into the airline business a little earlier as he worked alongside Mitch Morris and June in the Morris air, which was popularly known as the Southwest Airlines’ look-alike. After selling Morris air to the Southwest airlines, David joined the airline’s management team as an executive head in the process gaining more experience in the airlines industry and worked as a consultant at the West Jet Airlines. His working for different companies and masterly of the airlines industry propelled him to take a bold move and start his own airline company, the JetBlue Airways. The company has undergone huge success over the years, and this has been because of some of the bold decisions David together with his management team undertook. One major decision that has helped the company to become this successful is the operations strategy the airline was going to use. Analyzing this decision through the six stages of decision making process may help us in the understanding why they made this decision. The first step of the decision making process is the problem identification stage and the decision taken should be used to help deal with the problem. Delivering efficient and reliable services to customers was the main problem David had identified and he explained this by the long queues people made at the airport in trying to pay for tickets and make reservations. People would be force to wait in long lines which made them waste a lot of time at the airports. Technology use would be beneficial both to the airline and to passangers. David’s main agenda for the company was to make it an airless airline which would make it more efficient. Technology would bring humanity in the airlines. Since the use of technology was David’s main objective, there was no alternative to it and all the companies’ operations were to be carried out in a way that they helped achieve the goal. The company however had to seek for more funding as the process of using technology and computers proved to be more expensive. The company provided every of its pilot with a laptop that had the flying schedule and programs. The pilots would conduct a pre-flight check on themselves through the computers as part of the flying procedures. The company however might have thought of hiring technology experts who would deal with the technological requirements of the pilots making the latter concentrate only on flying the airplanes. These extra personnel would guide the pilots on the flight schedule. The third step is evaluating the alternatives that the decision had. Hiring more personnel would lead to more expenses, as the monthly wage bill would rise. All data maintenance in the airlines was computerized and this helped dealt with the errors brought about by manual updating. The airline would be always efficient as the computer systems use would automatically update themselves. The computerized operational strategy agreed upon was the best compared to the other alternative of hiring more personnel and manually running things in the airlines. One of the goals David had in mind when coming up with the company was to be efficient to its customers and this operations strategy decision would help achieve that goal. After evaluating the alternatives, the next stage in the decision making model is to make the decision and in this case, the best course of action is to implement the operations strategy (Lussier, 2012). Computerizing every activity and operation of the company would help it to achieve its set goals of being a paperless airline. People would avoid long queues and other hustles they went through when trying to catch a flight. The automatic data updating by the machines would ensure that there are no mistakes or irregularities resulting from manual updating. The pilots have an already planned flight schedules even before they can start taking off and this makes them be prepared for the flight. The airlines’ pilots would conduct the pre-flight check themselves on their laptops and this would give them more time to prepare for take off. This preparedness reduces the number of accidents that occur. The lesser accidents reported the good the airline’s image in the public eyes would become in turn increasing their customers. After making the decision, the fifth step was to implement the decision and this was not to be delayed as all the necessary evaluation had taken place (Lussier, 2012). They probably hired some computer wizards who would be in charge of coming up with the necessary programs and software necessary for the carrying out the decision. The last step in the decision making process is the monitoring the progress of the agreed and implemented decision. This necessitates the hiring of more staff to aid in the maintenance of the computers and regular updating. Carrying out a small survey to discover the reaction of the people is also helpful. This would make the gather more information on areas where there is nee for improvement. Question 2 The present economy of a country or industry is not stable as there are periods whereby it will be good and others where it has deteriorated. Companies operating in that industry or country need to come up with drastic measures to avoid them making losses during such hard times. In the event whereby the airlines industry’s economy has deteriorated, as it happened after the 2001 September attack in the US, the airlines company must make decisions that would guarantee their safety. One decision that such airlines ought to make is to stick to their initial charges on their tickets. This should be done irrespective of the fact that the status of the economy has worsened. Hiking the prices of the tickets would be reasonable to help them cope with the extra operational costs they are incurring but this would make people shy away from using the airlines and opt for other cheaper transport mode. The companies should however think of ways of cutting the unnecessary costs rather than increasing the travelling fee. Investigating the performance of other travel methods and having a comprehensive report of it would enable me, the managing director to convince the other senior officials and shareholders about the dangers of raising our charges. It would be unproblematic to persuade them that the other transport means are benefiting from the problems experienced in the airline industry. The decision of reducing the number of expenses the companies use is another decision that needs to be made. They can lay off some workers to help reduce the wage bill. The workers laid off should be the ones whose jobs could be handled by part time persons, as it was not complicated. The number of flights going at one place as in the process it would reduce the costs of operation. Reducing the costs of operations would be easy to trace, as it would be evident to the members of the airline that reducing the company’s expenses helps in minimizing losses. If the decision making process is too complex that there are some people whom have to be waited for a conclusion to be found, the prudent step is to change the company’s constitution and rules. Times like this need quick decision making as any delay may lead to unprecedented losses. Having a vigorous and quick thinking management team would help in achieving this (Lussier, 2012). Having a good example of how slow decision making have negatively impacted the company in the past may be useful in convincing board members in adopting this decision. References Gittell, J. H and O’Reilly. 2001. JetBlue Airways Starting From Scratch. Harvard Business School. Lussier, R. N. 2012. Management fundamentals: concepts, applications, skill development. Cengage Learning: Mason, Ohio, South-Western. Read More