JetBlue and WestJet: A Tale of Two IS Projects

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1. The reservation system at airlines such as WestJet and JetBlue is very important. The reservation system provides several services for the airline's customers. This includes selling seats, allowing customers to shop for flights on the website of the airlines, and collecting payments. The reservation system also provides a line of communication with the reservation agents. Several services are provided by the reservation system. It helps customers select particular seats, reach airport kiosks, and check-in their luggage. The reservation system also helps customers get refunds, board planes, and rebook if required. The operational activities and decision-making are impacted because these services affect flight planning and dispatch of aircraft. The passenger data also influences operations control, integration with the crew, and maintenance planning. Decision-making related to schedules, airport management, and slot control is influenced by the reservation system (a). Operations relating to ground and flight communications are also affected by the information from the reservation system.

2. The key risk factors of the projects to upgrade the reservation systems of WestJet and JetBlue are related to difficulties customers face when placing reservations and the website of the airlines crashing repeatedly. Moreover, during upgradation, the call centers get overwhelmed by the number of calls, and the airport customers experience slowdowns. The quality of customer service provided declines suddenly. The main problem is the movement of files on transactions for customers who had purchased flights on the old reservation system servers to those in the upgraded system. In many cases, the two servers were located in far-off places causing delay and confusion. The movement of files from the old servers to the new servers required complex operations to process the data. The movement of files takes time and if the airline continues to operate with its normal flights with normal passenger loads it is bound to face difficulties. Thousands of bookings made for future flights made before the upgrade become inaccessible because of the file transfer. Even after the file transfer files remain inaccessible because the new system has to match the flights using the upgraded system.

3. The management factors WestJet that caused these problems were they did not anticipate and provide for the time required for the transfer of 840,000 files, the management did not reduce the flight passenger load to ...