Flying High: How Jetblue Founder and CEO David Neeleman Beats the Competition... Even in the World's Most Turbulent Industry

As the founder by the age of 40 of three successful discount airline companies--most recently the billion-dollar JetBlue--David Neeleman and his story deserves in-depth analysis. Unfortunately, this largely uncritical profile doesn't provide that. Veteran aviation and business writer Wynbrandt presents Neeleman's life in a lively and highly readable style. The first half lays out the details of Neeleman's major successes: turning the small leisure business Morris Travel into a national air charter by developing the concept of ticketless reservations, which Wynbrandt correctly claims""would forever revolutionize airline bookings,"" and brokering a deal with Southwest Airlines, which purchased Morris and then cut Neeleman loose. But the bulk of the book describes the development and success of JetBlue and presents a superficial look at some extremely troubling aspects of Neeleman's business philosophy, such as his disdain for unions (""I think they did a great thing for our country at a certain time"") and his allowing JetBlue to share records of five million passenger transactions (a violation of its own privacy policy) with an army contract company working on post-9/11 security problems, a decision Wynbrandt too easily explains as a product of Neeleman's Mormon-based""respect for patriarchal authority.""