Sky-high efficiency: WestJet scales on demand to keep operations flying with Citrix DaaS^™

Preparing for takeoff: When the workplace must exist everywhere

That growth created a unique operational reality. WestJet’s employees work in corporate offices, airport terminals, maintenance vehicles, partner facilities, and home offices. Many of these environments are shared, locked down, or outside of WestJet’s direct control. At the same time, the airline must meet strict security and compliance requirements while maintaining operational agility and cost discipline. 

For WestJet, this is not simply a desktop delivery challenge. It is an operational challenge: how do you securely deliver full-fidelity work environments into places you do not control, at airline scale, without adding cost, complexity, or risk? 

“What really matters for us is being able to dynamically and quickly scale, pull resources back, or shift capacity around so we can support remote staff, offshore teams, and our managed service provider partners whenever they need it,” says Jeremy Cooper, Senior Systems Administrator, WestJet. 

Traditional, location-bound approaches could not solve this as a single, consistent system. WestJet needed a way to separate the work environment from the physical location where work happens. For years, Citrix has been the foundation that makes this possible. 

Navigating turbulence: Operating in constrained environments

Airports are among the most restrictive IT environments in the world. Many rely on “common use” terminals that are shared, locked down, and tightly controlled. Installing or managing local software is often impossible. Yet airline staff still need immediate access to mission-critical systems. 

Citrix has been pivotal in overseeing WestJet’s expansion in these environments. Using Citrix DaaS, the airline can scale without acquiring new real estate and without being limited by physical infrastructure constraints. This flexibility is critical not only for staff growth, but also for operating inside the rigid limitations of airport environments. 

By connecting these terminals securely through Citrix NetScaler Gateway, WestJet delivers full access to internal systems without requiring local installations, while maintaining strict PCI compliance. 

“Citrix allows us to exist. Without it, it would be very difficult and expensive for us to operate in a lot of these environments,” says Justin Stastook, Senior Product Manager of Workspace Services, WestJet. 

What started as a way to operate in constrained environments became a broader architectural approach: deliver secure workspaces anywhere, independent of the endpoint. 

Cruising at altitude: Remote work without expanding the compliance boundary

The same architecture proved critical as WestJet expanded remote work. 

By virtualizing the desktop experience, WestJet moved approximately 80% of its contact center agents to working from home. This eliminated the need for additional office space and expanded workforce flexibility. 

However, this shift created a significant challenge: Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance. Securing thousands of individual home networks and personal devices to the required standard was not realistic. 

Citrix provided the answer without expanding the compliance boundary to every home network. By segmenting traffic through Citrix NetScaler, WestJet could deliver a secure, compliant workspace to any device, anywhere. 

“We can segment them appropriately, be compliant and still provide them the flexibility to work from home while being secure,” says Stastook. 

Today, around 2,000 users, including contact center agents and back-office staff, log in through Citrix Workspace to access everything from Microsoft Teams to mission-critical reservation systems. 

Turning on a dime: Bringing the desktop to the tarmac 

For an airline, efficiency on the ground determines performance in the air. Nowhere is this more visible than in aircraft maintenance. 

Previously, mechanics would drive to an aircraft, perform a repair, and then return to a line office to log into a desktop and complete the required paperwork. This could add 20 to 30 minutes to every maintenance event before an aircraft could be cleared for departure. 

“In an airline, it’s all about the turn,” says Stastook. “And the turn started to get really long.” 

WestJet changed this model by mounting laptops directly into maintenance vehicles and connecting them over LTE using Citrix. Mechanics now access persistent sessions that remain available throughout their shift. 

“They show up, replace whatever part needs replacing… and then basically they just walk 20 meters from the plane to the truck, enter the paperwork, submit it, and then they can leave,” says Stastook. 

This change has reduced maintenance-related turnaround times by more than 30 minutes per event, delivering meaningful operational and financial impact.

Clear skies: From debate to data-driven operations 

With a lean IT team managing a highly distributed environment, troubleshooting used to be slow and frustrating. When performance problems occurred, determining whether the root cause was the network, the application, or the infrastructure could take days or even weeks. 

“It was maddening,” says Stastook. “We were defending ourselves and the product and the work we do”. 

The deployment of Citrix uberAgent changed this dynamic by providing deep, end-to-end visibility into user experience and session performance. 

“The time to detection and root cause is a lot faster than it used to be,” says Cooper. “Some of those ones previously could take days to weeks… now [it’s] hours or minutes”. 

This shift allows WestJet’s IT team to focus less on debate and more on continuous improvement. 

Outlook: A foundation for resilient operations 

Today, Citrix is the access layer for WestJet’s critical operations. It supports active-active data centers, enables rapid onboarding of seasonal staff, and allows the airline to extend secure operations into new environments without waiting for physical infrastructure. 

“As we grow globally, we need the ability to scale quickly into new regions. A cloud presence gives us the agility to expand beyond North America with confidence,” says Stastook. 

Summing up, Bruce Johnson, Vice President of Enterprise Technology at WestJet, says: 

“Our partnership with Citrix allows us to do our business well - to service our employees so that they can service our customers. It’s an enabler. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to provide the level of service that we do.”