Southwest Airlines is floundering because passengers will pay to not "fight for a seat," JetBlue founder says

JetBlue founder David Neeleman says that customers are currently hankering for a luxury flight experience.

Transcript

00:00We thought if we could just get you there for twice as fast for half the

00:06price and do it with a different product mix than the traditional ULCCs. We call

00:12ourselves an NLCC, a nice low-cost carrier, and have options. You know what's

00:17different today, Jessica, about the industry is about 25% of the people want

00:21an upgraded experience. You know one of the reasons the Southwest is kind of

00:25struggling today is that kind of this scramble for seats and it was cool back

00:30in the 70s and 80s and even the 90s, but today when Delta is so much better, when

00:35United is so much better, people don't want to fight for a seat. They want to

00:39pay a little extra to have extra legroom. They want to be able to pay a

00:43little extra for a first-class seat, a lot extra for a first-class seat.