WestJet’s 21 anniversary provided the ideal opportunity to remind people of its flights to Las Vegas while celebrating its company milestone.

For three nights in May of 2017, passengers on flights to Vegas saw a massive roulette wheel, in the desert from 12,000 ft. in the air. When passengers looked out their windows the wheel was spinning, and when it stopped, it displayed a seat number, indicating a winner.

The brand partnered with Westbury production to bring the idea to life. During the process, WestJet achieved two world records - ‘greatest light output in a projected image’ and ‘largest circular projection’. Visible from 12,000 ft., the wheel was 785,398 sq. m. in diameter and reached 4,666,000 lumens.

There were two parts to the display; the wheel and the winning seat number. For the wheel, they used a 24-segment display created by using high output lighting fixtures with fine-tune control over position, focus and colour. This allowed them to transform the terrain into brightly lit and defined sections of the wheel on the ground.

For the seat number, they used a 7-segment display created by using 150’ x 50’ sections of truss and scaffold. They attached diffusion material to it, which created each of the “pixels” in the 7-segment display.

To ensure this came together they needed to coordinate pilots with in-flight operations and flight control centre. By the end of the few short weeks, the event was ready. The campaign achieved more than four million impressions with coverage in more than 25 media outlets and over 1.5 million views of WestJet’s Facebook video.