Crew Mobile App Pilot Project Manager Simulation — WestJet Airlines

The scenario

WestJet Airlines carries roughly 25 million guests a year out of its Calgary headquarters, with about 4,500 cabin crew across the network. Those crew run their working lives through three systems that were never built for a phone. Rosters and trip bidding live in FLICA, reached through a desktop browser. Shift trades go through a phone call to Crew Scheduling. Pay statements sit in a separate HR portal behind a different login. Crew Mobile is the first attempt to put all four in one native iOS and Android app. The pilot is scoped to a single group: 800 cabin crew based at Calgary, represented by CUPE Local 4070, over fourteen weeks and a $1.5M capital envelope. Four functions are in scope — roster view, trip bidding, shift trades and pay statements — and the build has been running for nine weeks already. Three of the four are code-complete. The pilot exists to answer a question, not to ship software. WestJet's executive team has a $9M network rollout sitting behind it, and they will not fund that on a demo. They want to know whether crew will actually use a tool like this, whether it reduces the calls into Crew Scheduling, and whether the union will live with it. Your job is not to finish the app. Your job is to come back in fourteen weeks with an answer solid enough to spend $9M against — and the only people who can give you that answer spend their working day at 38,000 feet.

What you'll do as the project manager

• →Enrol at least 600 of the 800 Calgary-based cabin crew on Crew Mobile and keep them enrolled through the pilot window
• →Reach 60% weekly active use across enrolled crew in the final four weeks of the pilot, measured in-app rather than by survey
• →Cut shift-trade and roster calls into Crew Scheduling by 25% against the Calgary baseline of 1,900 calls a month
• →Complete formal CUPE Local 4070 consultation on every in-scope function before that function is enabled for crew
• →Deliver a written go/no-go recommendation, with evidence, that the executive team can take to the $9M network rollout decision

Project management skills you'll build

The challenges you'll navigate

• •Crew engagement is already weak — the Crew Advisory Group has stopped meeting and the readiness survey has 31 responses from 800 crew
• •CUPE Local 4070 has been briefed but never formally consulted, and its written question about collective agreement articles is unanswered
• •Pay statements are the only function not yet code-complete and the only one that reads from the payroll system of record
• •The pilot has no agreed definition of success, so four stakeholders currently hold four different ideas of what a 'yes' looks like

Technology & stakeholders

You'll manage 7 stakeholders, including Marla Kowalchuk (VP, Inflight Operations), Devin Arsenault (Director, IT PMO & Digital Delivery), Harjit Grewal (Manager, Mobile Engineering), and more.

What you'll walk away with

A verified, shareable record of a completed enterprise project — plus the PMO deliverables you produced along the way (charter, project plan, SteerCo deck, closure document). It's real, demonstrable project management experience you can put on your resume and speak to in interviews.

Frequently asked questions

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