Week 8 Checkpoint It/205

JetBlue and WestJet: A tale of two IS projects

JetBlue and WestJet

Danielle Worrell

IT/205

Airlines such as WestJet and JetBlue promote low-cost and high-efficiency carriers by giving highly competitive fares and super customer service. Reservation system for these airlines are very important that when these airline companies need to make the sweeping IT upgrades, the relationships with the customers and their brands can be ruined if things go out of sorts when doing th upgrade. This can be seen when in 2009, both of the airlines upgraded reservation systems, SabreSonic CSS was launch, customers had started struggling to place their reservations, and the WestJet Web Site crashed repeatedly. WestJet’s call centers were flooded and overwhelmed, customers had also experienced slowdowns at airports. This delay pushed a major dissatisfaction plunge in customers. In addition to the high rise in customer complaint calls, customers also published to the Internet to express their displeasure in the company. Upset flyers expressed outrage on Facebook and over ran WestJet’s site, causing the repeated crashes.

These problems impact both of the airlines operational activities and decision making to change their initial carrier which had started out as a system designed for smaller start-up airlines to a better carrier. Other than that, both airlines really needed more processing power to store and deal with far greater volumes of customers. They also needed features available, such as the ability to link prices and seat inventories to other airlines in which they cooperated. Both companies JetBlue and WestJet signed and contracted with Sabre Holdings to upgrade both airline reservation systems. The differences between WestJet and JetBlue’s implementation of Sabre’s SabreSonic CSS reservation systems illustrate the dangers that follow in all large-scale IT overhauls. This serves as yet another reminder of how successfully planning and debugging for...