Flights grounded in Virgin Blue 'chaos'
 

The delays seem to be getting a lot of coverage even though I understand its only around 50 flights?

Last count on their website is about 110 flights cancelled and I imagine the same number or more delayed. Prob looking at up to 15 000 pax from cancelled flights and at least the same delayed, considering they carry around 50k pax a day that is a pretty significant disruption, hence the media coverage. I am sure there will be some pretty colouful meetings happening at The Village over the next couple of days and if its an external supply problem, someone is going to get a nice bill for compensation!

Second rate system that you wouldn't find in Rwanda no doubt. Another Godfreyism. Buying the cheapest of everything always.

Time for the head of IT to pack his/her stuff up and leave. Its a disgrace.

Forget business travellers VB i you think you can pedal this sort of rubbish.

QF have had their computer issues in the past too but this at one VB is a killer.Awful timing for customers.
I feel for the frontline staff getting their heads chewed off all day.

Navitaire strikes again ... how the hell does a hardware failure constitute the entire booking system failing. I thought the system was supposed to have Disaster Recovery in Sydney, UK and France.

Systems have been out since 8am this morning and as of yet, still no fix.

Perhaps time to invest in equipment starting with an industrial size broom to sweep out all the incompetence before it shuts the whole company.

Destroying the publics confidence in the company by the minute.

In the words spoken to Ranga by Virgin gate staff when Ranga and Mrs Ranga missed a flight:

'Go upstairs and tell them your sob story'

No sympathy from me when you've got w@nkas like that representing you :cool:

Mrs Ranga has flown to the states 3 times since then (on higher fares than the 'Virgin Flair') I'll not fly on this airline while Virgin sanction speaking to customers like they are teenagers....like.

I'm guessing that a whole stack more people wont fly with them again.

Be interesting to see what 'compensation' is offered by this 'two bit' outfit?

An article I read quoted VB as offering a full refund by way of credit for future flying and rebooking of current flights if delays longer than 4 hrs are experienced.

GB

Getting Facts Right...
 

A few facts here... The Virgin Blue GDS (NewSkies) is a hosted system - it is run by Navitaire NOT the airline. The same system that Jetstar uses. Tiger uses the older version (OpenSkies). Qantas and V Australia also use a GDS that is hosted by a third-party (Amadeus Altea). As do most major airlines around the world.

Before everyone starts squawking about heads-rolling, etc. Have a f*cking clue what your on about. I don't work for the airline, but I do work in IT and am intimately familiar with their IT operations.

I am working on finding out exactly what happened that caused such an outage, given that the DJ databases are replicated across three datacenters worldwide.

Jack Ranga

So sorry to hear of the way you got treated. I'm sure this isn't the way the majority of crew act yet I hope your were properly seen to and/or compensated. Unfortunately it seems more service training might be required for some crew.

As a flight attendant on airport reserve in Melbourne during the chaos, by choice I helped at check-in (answering questions, que-combing etc...) I did my very best for 4 hours and have to admit all the passengers bar one were fantastic with very understanding attitudes. Thanks everyone for your understanding!

Also I was told Jetstar have the same system and had the same problem yet was minimilised obviously due to Qantas' help in moving passengers. This true?

I am interested in the IT perspective from "heffy inc", regardless of spin, some one in IT has not done their job well enough. simple as that.

If a pilot made an error of similar proportions, i.e. delayed flights had others cancelled, I suspect these same IT "guru's" along with HR would be burning them at the stake, no questions asked.

IT have screwed up and some one will be held accountable, and held accountable by the same bank Johny"s that share their four walls.

Not at all good enough and every one knows it.

If only you guys would take your own advise and have a clue before interfering with operational issues!

Big call to say IT have screwed up.

Maybe they did. Or maybe farmer brown dug up a cable that should've stayed burried. :\

Gee, this took a while to rear its head here. Anyway, as I work (loosely nowadays) in the IT area, I have been interested to hear the back story here.

It was interesting to hear this morning that VB are blaming their booking system 'provider', Navitaire (a spin off from Accenture which, IIRC, used to have a close associate with Microsoft). I wouldn't think they'd do that lightly, without being sure that they were factually correct.

Anyway, redundancy (be it Data Centre, comms links, systems etc) comes at a cost. 99.999% (What is 99.999? - Definition from Whatis.com) uptime comes at a cost too. So, yup, someone screwed up - but it still may be VB, if they decided that "she'll be right" and went for a lower spec'd system.

Time will tell and I, for one, will be watching with interest. I bet Navitaire will be checking with their lawyers too.

Capt C,

surely even if farmer Brown's dog dug up a few cables there should be redundancy built in to ensure that unless the world came to an end VB could continue to operate?

One event should not create the havoc that this appears to have created.

I really don't care about the blame game, however I would like to ask.......

What on earth happened to their Corporate Emergency Response Plan?

It would seem on the face of it that the CERP failed as well.

CC

More media coverage from Crikey
 

Virgin computer crash vergin' on a disaster
Ben Sandilands writes:
COMPUTER GLITCHES, VIRGIN BLUE AUSTRALIA
How does Virgin Blue rate in the continuing, if gradually clearing, crisis computer crisis that started yesterday morning and wrecked travel plans right across Australia?

It seems to depend on which live-cross-to-air you watch. It can be "it’s not their fault", "they are trying their best" and "we’ll get there in the end", at one part of a terminal, and seething anger, such as "the web site is useless", "I’ve been told to ring back in an hour for six hours" and "the staff haven’t a clue" at another.

This is Australia’s worst ever airline reservations and check-in computer system failure. It is a taste of what happens in the US each winter, when a severe storm at ONE airport strands enough jets to cascade the delays countrywide.

The similarity is that it is an event over which airlines claim to have no control, although there may have been an early warning of this last Monday afternoon, when this reporter was among "many" others who had the Virgin Blue reservations system malfunction and lose the plot at the click-to-pay stage, something that took 75 minutes on the phone to fix.

Whether it’s snow or blank screens, anything that prevents flights from vacating the gates at a hub airport such as Sydney or Melbourne, never mind ALL Virgin Blue’s cities at once, is going to paralyse an airline. If flight’s can’t be dispatched, everything goes cactus.

Which is why today remains really bad for Virgin Blue flyers, because a large number of those who were on 116 flights known to have been cancelled yesterday are trying to get on to flights today, and Virgin Blue, like its competitors, is booked nearly full, so even if everything runs like clockwork today, not everyone who was stranded yesterday will find a seat immediately.

Virgin Blue is scoring well when it comes to promising compensation, at least on media reports. It is promising replacement flights for those unable to fly yesterday and today. It is picking up hotel and transfer costs and other expenses, with an allowance of $220 being quoted by some passengers.

However, the claim "form" on its website is totally vague. It doesn’t specify amounts, and sets the displaced with a need to scan or photocopy a range of receipts arising from the delays.

The form is weird in that it could save an awful lot of mucking around by just asking displaced passengers to enter their PNR code, which is a unique combination of six capital letters or numbers that appears on every reservation.

Which raises the terrible thought. If this crash by the external software used for bookings and check-ins has corrupted the passenger identifier codes, Virgin Blue is in really diabolical trouble. No, make that Accenture, the parent company for the Navitaire computer system, which is about to be sent to hell.

While Virgin Blue may get high marks for stepping up quickly to compensate the displaced, it can be argued it is very aware of the situation in the US and EU and UK, where fierce legal penalties are now enforced on airlines in similar situations because of their past resistance to compensating passengers for cancelled or severely disrupted flights.

No Australian airline would want to cause similar laws to be enacted here.

Don’t be misled either by reports of a total of 116 flights being cancelled yesterday, or the 13 that were listed as cancelled today. All flights, cancelled or not, are impacted by these delays. Check your flight status on the Virgin Blue web site, and keep all flight and delay-related receipts.

Just curious, but why is the failure only limited to the east coast?

As previously mentioned here, surely there is a need for redundancies in the network and/or there is currently redundancies within it due to the failure not being nationwide?

Couple of factors here:
Very true for starters. However when this crap system crapped out, the bigger issue was to continue services with as minimal delay as possible. In recent years VB has cut back on staff training, particular the manual check-in process because 'very rarely does the entire system fall over'. So they cut out a few days of solid training and recurrence training for staff and this is what you get, an exasperated problem if and when the whole system collapses.
If you want to hang anybody I would target the Head Of Ground Operations scalp for starters.

dom,

I made a complaint about this clowns behaviour. I received an e-mail saying that action would be taken if it's warranted. I asked what action was taken in the end and the e-mail stated that it was against this person's privacy to reveal what action, if any, was taken :ugh:

That did it for me and Virgin. I find the Virgin 'experience' juvenile and immature. I feel for sensible people in your organisation who understand what service is all about and behave accordingly. You are given a bad reputation by probably a minority who behave like d!ckheads.

Outside of the terminal this idiot would have copped a smack in the mouth for the way he spoke to my partner.