Thanks Virgin - ruined my holiday!

[smallpilot]

Was booked on the VS49 today LGW-MCO. Its now 7.00pm and I'm back home. Total Shambles. Manual check-in due to LGW computer probs was a disaster, most of the check-in staff admitted they had never done one and it showed. Flight was due to leave at 13:00, started queing at 11.15, fianlly checked-in at 13:00. Not a good start.
Sent through to departure lounge with an 'estimated' etd at 15:00 showing. At 16:00 still no change, not even a gate number and no sign of anyone from VS, not so much as a cup of coffee on offer and no information. At 16.30, called down to be told "flight cancelled as crew out of hours" (that was obviously on the cards 3 hours earlier - why n relief crew VS?), will try to run it so"sometime" tomorrow with vague talk of 13:00 again (why cant we go earlier at 2nd attempt VS ?). Hilton was offered to now fuming Pax but sod that - I'd rather just go home, not prepared to hang around LGW all day again for a flight that might or might not run. I'm only on a 5 day trip so to lose a day has ruined my holiday. Well done Virgin, 0 out of 10 from this Pax - and your offer of 'money off your next flight' is an insult. There wont be a next flight with VS, its back to BA for me. I am very upset and angry at this time. :mad:

[sixmilehighclub]

Sounds like some very bad organising and no contingency plan! I'm surprised they did not have any crew on standby, and would a 4 hour delay put them out of hours?? The fact they weren't able to complete a manual check in says alot for airlines who are older and more experienced. Did they not offer to rebook you onto another airline?

[Avman]

The price of automation! Watch it happen more often in the future (not just the airline industry by the way). Most people no longer have the necessary skills to revert to "manual" mode. Result: total chaos!

[RT_060590]

Just a bad day that got worse, can you really blame virgin for the computer failure though??

[Final 3 Greens]

Smallpilot

Were you given information about the compensation scheme?

Provision of such information is mandatory.

Worth looking to see if this flight was covered by the rules, since if it was, VS may not have done as much as they should have done (i.e. getting you there by another route/airline.)

Also, if the EU rules apply, you should be offered a refund.

Although the computer system was (possibly) beyond Virgin's control (a lawyer would have to take a view on that), the crew going out of hours without a standby crew may not be.

So definitely worth a look..... and I'm sorry that your holiday was ruined.

[MarkD]

not to mention that VS probably don't have spare crews for every LGW flight at once so perhaps the spare had already been allocated? Any VS crew on forum?

I think there's a VS forum (v-flyer.com IIRC) which you can post your question/points on with more chance of an informed response.

[WHBM]

It's indeed true that if you get an airportwide problem the relief crews get used up very rapidly indeed.

Why aren't checkin staff trained (and periodically refreshed) in manual procedures as part of their basic training ? I've been on the receiving end of this as well previously. For each pax, once they were identified, ALL the details on the BC were only started to be written out by hand, laboriously and slowly. A little bit of intelligent organisation would have worked wonders. Departure 1 hour late as a result.

Out of interest, anyone travelling Ryanair from Gatwick to Dublin that day, did they just close off at their usual cutoff time and leave the rest of the queue behind with no refund ?

[EI-CFC]

I was just thinking that about the stand-by crew situation. I'd imagine the stand by crew members may have already been used!

[PAXboy]

I am not involved but - who's computer system went down?

[Irish Steve]

"flight cancelled as crew out of hours"

Used to handle a flight at DUB that originated in Manchester, and was heading for Cape Town. It HAD to go no later than 45 minutes after scheduled departure time, otherwise crew were out of hours, we had an hour to load it, (767-300) and sort out any problems, like missing passengers which meant off loading bags. It wasn't easy!!!

Computers will fail, and most handling companies are not geared to deal with that in any sort of timely manner, the turnover of staff is just too high for them to have all the check in people trained in manual procedures that they might use once a year, if that, and there is no such thing as a "standard" procedure, each airline has slightly different procedures and requirements, so training everyone in all the options is just not going to happen.

OK, it looks like some mistakes were made, but in the industry of today, it doesn't take much for the entire day's program to become a ball of chalk.

Part of the problem is that aviation has become too reliable in some respects.

It wasn't that many years ago that you left London, and stopped at Shannon for fuel, and then headed for Gander for more fuel. After about 8 hours, the decision would be made if there was enough fuel left to get there, and if not, you came back to Shannon and tried again the following day, and there were no Hilton Hotels close to the airport in those days either.

Now, there are people that get upset if the landing after a 9 hour flight is more than 5 minutes out from the time that was displayed at take off. Somewhere along the line, there has to be some realism here, and a recognition that problems will happen, and have to be overcome.

OK if I was only going for a week, then I'd be upset, and looking for some recompense for the loss, but I don't think that all the blame for this can be laid at the airline door, there are a number of other factors at work here, and all of them combined to provide the end result.

[MarkD]

well said Irish Steve

[MonarchA330]

Having worked for a handling agent at LGW on check-in, I often wondered how we would cope if we did suddenly have to go manual. We did a manual check in once during training at thats it.

How much disruption would be caused if this handling agent had one day a month where the check in staff did all check in manually? At least this way when it came to having to do it for real, they would all be in practice and it should not cause too much of an issue..

...that is if the main problem WAS the staff being unsure of what they were doing.

Food for thought...

M330

[lexxity]

I'm sorry you lost a day of your holiday, but having done manual check-in several times for short and longhaul I can tell you it's a nightmare. It doesn't matter how much you practice (and in reality, it is just not practice to train in a live situation) it will take a lot longer than using the computer system.
The computer systems offer live updates on seat maps, pax figures, bag figures, special need entries, messages, printing of bag tags and boarding cards. Now imagine having to write all that down for say 250pax, how long do you think it will take? Exactly.

I expect the standby crew were called for the first out of hours crew whose a/c was ready to go.

Tough break for you though, but it happens sometimes.

Edited to add this link, not for today, but I expect it might be the same problem.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4430856.stm

[striparella]

Sorry your holiday was ruined - i can't understand the crew being out of hours either.

I know it's no comfort but the staff at LGW are not VS, they are an agency and a fantastic example of why the company should have it's own staff. They failed passengers and the company.

I work at LHR and even though i've never done it live, i could quite easily do manual check in. It is easier and in fact offers a better service especially in terms of seating as only a limited number of agents have access to the seat map.

If organised properly, manual check in shouldn't cause a flight to be in that much disarray.

Sure we have to write boarding cards out and then get them validated (as any one could write one out = big security risk!) but it can be done effeciently.

[WHBM]

they are an agency and a fantastic example of why the company should have it's own staff
Unfortunately this is also a way to absorb most/all of an airline's operating profits.

I recall the withdrawl of Alaska Airlines direct handling at Tucson, Arizona airport, cutting back to a handling agent (quite unusual in the US). They had just one daily flight in and out at midday, on a 30-minute turnaround. For this the station had 14 full-time Alaska Airlines staff, and they didn't do any work for anyone else. There was also a dedicated check-in desk, office space and ramp equipment. It must have absorbed so much of the revenue.

Agree you do need to retain one of your own management to oversee things carefully.

[Pax Vobiscum]

Fair point if there were only one flight a day, WHBM, but I'd have thought Virgin operate enough flights from Gatwick to be able to justify employing their own staff.

[apaddyinuk]

There is a huge logistical dilemma to resolve when systems suddenly go down.

You need to remember that manual check in is not simply a case of scribbling out a boarding pass and writing a bag tag.
Weights need to be recorded of bags on a handwritten loads sheet, the name of each pax has to be written down with its catagory (male, female, child, infant etc) and ticked off a sheetwith a sequence number and if a seatplan is to be used then only two or three desks can be open for an individual flight (and lets face it thats not enough for Virgins rather high density jumbos) so that the seat plan sheet wont go missing. Someone needs to do all the calculations of weight alone as the load sheets arrive at the last minute. Not to mention all the passengers who may have checked in the night before when the systems were working or earlier in the day before the systems crashed. All these pax would have to be brought back and re-checked in as their info would be lost in a crashed computer otherwise.

Now if this all happens to one flight, expect a delay, but when it happens to the whole days operation then you have MAJOR problems on your hands! This is obviously what happened to Virgin on this day and credit should be given to the fact that they still managed to get loads of their flights out. All though I appreciate that this is of no comfort to small pilot.

Many moons ago we had a major computer failure to the Aer Lingus Astral system in dublin,cork, Shannon and Heathrow simultaniously. I cant speak for the other stations but in dublin we suddenly jumped into manual action (it was also about 10am so you can imagine the havoc that would occur). We managed to get the europeans out relatively on time by zoning pairs of desks to each flight and we went free seating onboard. The desks were closed at -25 (well, more or less!!! LOL) and the check in staff rushed the load sheets to the gate where those who already had a boarding pass from before the computer crash were then checked in by the gate staff and the despatcher did all the calculation work there and then. It really was amazing to watch how well it worked in the end. Unfortunately the longhauls were not so lucky and there were many problems there but merely due to the nature of the operation!!!!

[G-CPTN]

Some 20 years ago I was flying out of Hong Kong with Singapore Airlines on the day that they chose to switch their check-in system and the computers didn't like it so check-in was manual. The flight was several hours late taking off (it was a B747). I wondered at the time why they didn't just allocate seats like Easyjet do today (next 20 passengers . . .)