2005 C.I.P.A. Winners

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Air Transat

Relocation to Montreal-Trudeau Airport

Air Transat, founded in 1987, offers departures from Canada to some 90 destinations in 25 countries. With a fleet of 14 aircraft, it is Canada's leading vacation travel airline and carries more than 2.4 million passengers annually. Air Transat is a member of Transat A.T. Inc., a Montreal-based integrated tourism company.

Challenge

In 2002, Aéroports de Montréal (ADM), the agency that manages Montreal's air transportation facilities, announced its plan to consolidate all passenger flights at Montreal-Trudeau airport in Dorval and convert Mirabel airport into a hub for freight and cargo. As the only remaining year-round passenger airline based at Mirabel, Air Transat was significantly affected by this decision.

The airline's move, two years later, was a project of enormous magnitude and complexity whose constraints were absolute. Passenger safety had to be ensured throughout the relocation. As well, services essential to airline operations could not be interrupted. Failure to meet the target dates would force postponement of the move and could result in cost overruns of several million dollars, and a perception of a lack of quality for the service. Simply put, the project's success would hinge on uncompromising, continuous risk management and absolute adherence to the schedule.

The company recognized that change management of the project would be critical to its success. It established a dedicated intranet site to help keep all 1,250 Montreal-based employees apprised of the project's progress from January to December 2004. The site became the focal point for all change-management activities.

Objectives

The IT objectives of the project included:

• Design and delivery of all IT infrastructures within the company's new buildings at the destination;
• Preparation of eight separate premises on the main airport site;
• Reconstruction of the global network;
• Updating of printing and fax technologies;
• Consolidation of computer rooms;
• Physical transfer of equipment to Dorval from Mirabel.

During the planning phase, the technology portion of the project was divided into four broad areas: construction of new buildings, physical transfer of airline operations, moving computer rooms and relocation of other areas of activity.

Solution

Air Transat used a methodology inspired by that used to convert systems for the Year 2000. It created discrete "business packages," small units that could be logically broken down and transferred. Each represented a comprehensive set of components that included business functions, hardware, software, data, voice, telecommunications and radio.

Identifying and documenting all interdependencies between each of the airline's internal systems and those extending to other Transat business units was an integral part of the exercise. Once these tasks were complete, a specific move plan was developed for each package, complete with procedures, instructions, material lists and rollback plans. A total of 175 mini-moves were thus defined.

Thereafter, business packages were grouped, assigned a team with their own detailed project plan and specific budget and moved, according to constraints and dates imposed by the general move schedule. Control was ensured through a series of steering and decision committees that tracked every aspect of the project, sometimes daily.

The project was a complete success, delivering on scope, schedule and budget. No flights were delayed or cancelled. All publicly advertised milestones were met and the new airport check-in counters were opened on time.

The new facilities generated some significant efficiencies and resulting cost savings. Consolidation of services at the new facilities resulted in:

• 70-per-cent reduction in the number of servers;
• 70-per-cent reduction in the number of network switches;
• Reduction of two computer rooms into a single room (50 per cent smaller);
• Increase in the reliability of the wide-area-network bandwidth, and simplified management of the WAN;
• 75-per-cent reduction in the number of printers and fax machines;
• Centralization of fax transmission and reception.

Innovative Use of Technology

Air Transat adapted Year 2000 conversion methods and applied them to system inventory, system connections and interdependencies mapping as well as to modification and testing requirements.

VLAN Extension technology was used between the Mirabel and Montreal-Trudeau sites to ensure the independence of a service or application with regard to the location of its server.

Two very large virtual and physical server consolidation platforms, (VMware's ESX running on IBM's iSeries 445) one at the airport and one in downtown Montreal, made it possible to reduce the number of physical servers that required relocation.

A project-specific performance scorecard and its continuous publication largely contributed to the project's success, as proved by the very few rollbacks that occurred.

A 2005 CIPA Winner!

For its exceptional and innovative application of information technology to solve real-world business problems and bring greater benefit to all its stakeholders, Air Transat has been awarded a 2005 CIPA Silver Award of Excellence in the Efficiency and Operational Improvements, For Profit category.

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