Merge two huge airlines like Atlanta-based Delta and Minnesota’s Northwest into one mega-airline, and a few things have to go on the old to-do list.
You have to repaint hundreds of airplanes — a lot of heavy lifting, but no problem. You have to merge pilot seniority lists — a thorny personnel problem, but it can be worked out. And you have to reconfigure two of the most complex computer systems anywhere into a completely new, sprawling but seamless network. Now there’s a problem.
Delta Air Lines senior vice president and chief information officer Theresa Wise — a math whiz and concert violinist — is the woman who has been handed that daunting task. Talk about a math problem: Wise and the 2,000 people who work for her have until spring of next year to streamline 1,200 major software applications down to 635. And those have to work with 140,000 electronic devices that will serve 170 million passengers in 66 countries.
But making sure that the planet’s largest airline keeps its planes flying and passengers content was not what jolted Wise awake on a recent night before an early morning flight to Atlanta.
“People ask, ‘What keeps you up at night?’ ” said Wise, part of Delta’s 11-member corporate leadership team. “Well, last night it was three bee stings on one small child.”
The child was Wise’s 10-year-old daughter, Anna, who was attacked by bees at an outdoor concert performed by the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra in suburban Minneapolis. Wise is a violinist in the orchestra, playing an instrument she has loved since she was her daughter’s age.
When the 42-year-old mother of two is not tending insect bites or tuning up for her next musical gig, Wise faces the biggest technical challenge in the merger of Delta and Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest Airlines. The two carriers combined last year to become the new Delta, headquartered in Atlanta but with a major hub in Minneapolis, where Wise lives and where she was a Northwest vice president prior to the merger.
Unprecedented task
Wise spends about half her time in Atlanta these days, but she has no immediate plans to move here. Her husband, Jim, runs a swim program and has a swimwear distributorship in Minnesota.
The combined airline she works for has about 70,000 employees (more than half live in metro Atlanta), 1,000 airplanes and flies to about 600 destinations worldwide, with 10 domestic hubs and overseas hubs in Tokyo and Amsterdam.
Wise oversees about 1,800 Delta employees and 200 or so subcontractors who are part of the massive computer realignment project.
“We’re doing what’s never been done before,” Wise said during an interview at Delta headquarters in Atlanta. “We are looking at a scale that has never been attempted.”
Delta has decided to roll out the new computer system in phases, with the last phase being in place by March 2010.
The overall project is broken down into 75 projects with more than 1,700 milestones to be met along the way. To date, about half have been met.
“There is no one big bang,” Wise said. “Ideally, it’s a series of little bangs.”
New York-based airline consultant Robert Mann said maintaining two airline computer systems while trying to devise a third is a tough juggling act, made even more complex by the size of the new Delta.
“It’s like changing the model year at the car factory while the assembly line is still running,” Mann said. “If this fails, you essentially go off line.
“It’s mission critical.”
A bumpy ride
There have been a few bumps along the way.
Some customers have complained on a consumer Web site about a rocky transition period where both they and gate agents are confused because the airline is now called Delta, but customers’ flights still have either Delta or Northwest flight designations. That will remain the case until Delta gets a single operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration later this year.
The situation can get more complicated if problems arise for passengers who book flights on Northwest’s Web site that are operated by Delta and in airports where Delta and Northwest operations are not yet combined.
“We’re on track to achieve a single operating certificate by the end of the year with full integration of reservations systems in the first part 2010,” said Delta spokesman Trebor Banstetter. “During the transition, we’ve invested substantially in technology and training so all of our check-in kiosks and airport customer service employees can accommodate all of our customers, regardless of which airline they are flying.”
Math and diplomacy
Wise, who has a doctorate in applied mathematics from Cornell University, doesn’t just have to be on top of her technical game for the transition. She also has to play diplomat to Delta and Northwest employees, former competitors who now have to function as a team.
“I’ve known Theresa for years, and have complete confidence in her technological and leadership skills,” Delta CEO Richard Anderson said. “I’ve always been struck by how she combines technological brilliance with down-to-Earth people skills. That’s why I wanted her to take on this very challenging role at Delta. ”
Wise is no stranger to challenges. When she was an intern at Northwest, she developed a mathematical model to handle airline scheduling as part of her doctoral thesis. The airline later put the model into practice.
“I had always loved math, and my parents loved math and numbers,” Wise said.
She grew up in suburban Minneapolis, where her father was a technician with the telephone company and her mother a secretary.
A learning experience
Wise excelled in math and science in school early on.
By her early teens she was part of an after-school math program for gifted students sponsored by the University of Minnesota. When she entered the program there were about 40 students, half boys, half girls. But within just a few years the ratio had changed.
“I walked in the door when I was 15 or 16, and I was the only girl left,” Wise said. “There were still 12 or so boys, but I was the only girl left standing.”
When her dad picked her up that day, Wise told him she was quitting the program because she was the only girl in the class.
“My dad stopped the car, and said, ‘OK, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Follow your dreams. Do what you want to do. But you have to have a better reason to quit than being the only girl.’
“I couldn’t find a better reason. So here I am.”
Wise said her lifelong love of math and problem-solving has proven to be a good fit for her current undertaking.
“On the tech front it’s a big, exciting challenge,” she said. “We’re doing what’s never been done before. We’re building out the technology that will make the world’s largest airline work.”
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