Flight Path: How Westjet Is Flying High in Canada's Most Turbulent Industry

Robert W. Sexty is a professor of commerce and business administration
at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is the author of Canadian
Business: Issues and Stakeholders.

Flight Path is an account of the first eight years (1996–2004) of
WestJet, Canada’s first low-cost, low-fare airline. Veteran business
journalist Paul Grescoe was given access to the company’s management
and staff. Based on these contacts, he describes WestJet’s formation
at the hands of four Calgary entrepreneurs, and goes on to review the
airline’s operational challenges and achievements.

Specific topics covered include profit-sharing and share-purchase
plans, early disasters, teamwork and employee empowerment, and going
public. Particular attention is paid to WestJet’s corporate culture
and core values. We learn, for example, that the accounting department
is referred to as “Beanland” while top managers are called “Big
Shots.”

The book’s insights into WestJet’s success are modest at best. With
only eight non-WestJet sources, Flight Path is very much a
corporate-influenced history. There is little in-depth analysis of the
company’s operations or the challenges confronting the airline
industry as a whole, and what little analysis there is does not
effectively incorporate the strategic concepts of differentiation and
low cost. Relating the WestJet story to the organizational life cycle of
a corporation, from birth through growth stages, would have been a more
fruitful avenue for the author to pursue.