✈️ Case 1: High Ambition, Low Altitude: How a National Airline Mistook IT projects for Enterprise Architecture of Airlines

It touched 3 departments. Out of 15. The claim?

Context

In the competitive Gulf aviation sector, a flagship national airline announced an EA-driven transformation to modernize operations and enhance customer experience.

The airline’s leadership touted EA as the strategic lever behind optimized operations, improved service, and digital innovation.

By leveraging enterprise architecture, they claimed to have unified disparate systems, streamlined flights and ground services, and empowered digital customer touchpoints – positioning EA as the cornerstone of their success.

As usual The press releases flew higher than some of their regional routes.

Scope Reality –

What Was Really Done:

In reality, the “EA” effort focused narrowly on IT integration and standardization. The project delivered a standardized IT infrastructure and consolidated applications – essentially an IT blueprint to reduce system silos.

The airline mapped some high-level business processes and automated a few workflows (e.g. flight scheduling and maintenance routines), but this was largely an IT architecture initiative under a grander name.

Consultants promised a “future-state EA in 20 weeks,” and indeed produced glossy system diagrams and migration plans.

What they did not produce:

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