The Sky’s the Limit

WestJet employees learn many important skills: how to tell good jokes, manage stock options and start new companies

Sep 1, 2008  

by Anthony A. Davis

“I think my team and clients would have to agree that I run my company, Energy Wireless Solutions, with a similar culture [to WestJet’s] on a smaller scale.”

Perhaps sticking even closer to the WestJet culture in their new venture is Mike Ritchie and Sean Jones. Like Dwayne Raessler, Ritchie was among the first group of pilots to join WestJet. He still flies with the company some 12 days a month – average for a full-time pilot under Canadian regulations. Jones was one of the three guys handling WestJet’s IT side at startup. Today, that department has more than 180 employees, and Jones, still full-time, is senior developer and team lead. But their employment at WestJet didn’t stop the two from opening Flight Deck International Bar and Grill this past April.

Propelled by an aviation theme, the jumbo-sized Flight Deck, located on Harvest Hills Boulevard in Calgary’s northeast, is one of the city’s largest stand-alone restaurant/bars. It hosts live bands several nights a week and boasts more than 100 plasma screens and an international collection of 101 beers and 101 wines, in addition to such aviation-named menu items as Northrop Nachos, Low Flying Chicken, Flying Tiger Shrimp and Stealth Fighter onions. The restaurant lies directly under the flight path of Calgary International’s runway 28, and, as they sit on the restaurant’s wraparound deck recalling how it all got started, Ritchie, 52, can see WestJet planes roar by so closely, he can probably discern who’s at the controls.

The person flying those WestJet planes overhead could be one of the two dozen pilots who invested with Ritchie and Jones as silent partners to finance the $4-million-plus project. (Three of the investors are pilots, active in the business. The remaining investors, about another two dozen of them, are friends and neighbours of Jones and Ritchie.)

One of the things Ritchie loves about being a pilot is dining in restaurants around the world. But he was frustrated that there were few decent restaurants near the airport in Calgary or close to his home in Country Hills. That got him thinking, back in 2000, about opening up a restaurant one day. Working at WestJet made him believe he could.

WestJet’s “can-do attitude” permeates the workforce, says Ritchie, and quickly got under his skin. It’s no different for Jones, 39. “The first thing is that WestJet tends to draw a lot of high energy people. High energy, positive outlooks and a lot of good ideas. And that’s one of the key factors that has helped WestJet be so successful since inception. And from there, once people get into WestJet, and you get WestJet in your blood, you start to think that, holy cow, I’m working with a phenomenal set of people. If they can do it, I can too. I’ve got this great idea, so I’m going to go out there and start doing something. Because you surround yourself with like-minded people, and the energy is synergistic, you’re off to the races.”

That attitude helped Ritchie, president and CEO of Flight Deck, and Jones, its director of IT and the man with the plasma screen obsession, beat off some of the naysayers – a few of whom were even WestJetters. Says Ritchie: “We went in knowing the success rate in general for restaurants is not as bad as airlines, but it’s pretty close.” But new airlines have a whopping 97% failure rate. So, adds Jones, “every time someone said, ‘Holy crap, Sean, I can’t believe you guys are doing that. It’s really risky,’ I said, look where you’re working! You’re at an airline and look how it’s done.”

Both men say had they been Air Canada employees, they doubt they would have had the nerve to start Flight Deck.

“Nope, never,” says Ritchie.

“Highly unlikely. That’s a resolute no,” follows Jones.

Ritchie elaborates: “Even though the scheduling there would give us similar time off and a similar amount of compensation, not counting the stocks, the atmosphere at Air Canada is not conducive to inspiring self-belief.”

Morgan himself wonders if WestJet will continue to be the kind of company that inspires employees to spread their entrepreneurial wings. “One of the things I saw in [WestJet’s] last quarterly report was they have gotten rid of all the entrepreneurs and put professional managers in.” Morgan agrees that entrepreneurial types don’t always make the best ongoing managers, but to make a statement that sounds as if WestJet cleaned house “sucks,” says Morgan. “That kind of statement to me is just backwards. You think they’d want more entrepreneurial spirit in there.” Without that creative energy flowing through the ranks, Morgan fears WestJet will stagnate. “You have to have an entrepreneurial spirit to move things, to take a different view of things.”

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