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.

News crews were out the front of 'The Village' this arvo, looks like the COO (Andrew David) is facing up to the press.

Accenture would be looking carefully at their contract, because an outage of that length could be terminally expensive.

the damages will be colossal.

Blaming someone else?
 

Virgin can no more blame "a third party" for it's woes anymore than BP can. If you pay peanuts etc.

totally agree that you get what you pay for.... alas not enough flair can fix this immediately!

Is it fixed yet?

"MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The Senior Editor of Air Transport World, Geoffrey Thomas, says only a few airlines have better back up systems than Virgin."
:eek:

was a H/W failure. that does seem unusually careless for a h/w failure to take a day to fix. no point having triple redundant DBs if there is a single point of failure elsewhere in the chain, esp the h/w.:ugh:

Facts - smoke equals fire.
 

While we're on the topic of facts...

Here are some - VB staff are tired of:

- 2-5 emails just about everyday of the year about IT outages.
- Having to install software/printers at every computer they use across the entire network each time they log in.
- Citrix rubbish freezing every single time you log on and requiring 15 attempts before it works.
- Having to employ various remedies/fixes to get computers to work so you can then actually do your job.
- Having to pull printers apart every single day.
- Every third delay being due to a New Skies passenger incorrect seat allocation and having to do manual load sheet changes.
- Passwords and logins for every second page they view.
- Ringing up IT to ask for a fix and getting told "can't be done unless you lodge a ticket". Are you even remotely familiar with how much material crews have to cover in a 30 minute sign on? Great idea lets lodge a ticket. Jesus.
- Emails from IT about staff blocking up the system (YOU are blocking the system with YOUR emails about outages not US, YOU)


and last but not least ...

-MOPPING UP THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MESS WHEN 116 FLIGHTS GET CANCELLED!

Wake up buddy there's a few people on here that do have an idea of what dealing with IT systems at VB is like. You are here because of us not the other way around. More importantly WE are here because of the 60000 people sitting on the floor at various airports that pay our wages. This mess has caused untold damage to the trust in the company at the most critical of times. Some of us take pride in our work, take pride in an on time departure and a happy customer. Some of us feel genuine empathy for the family of 5 sitting on the floor in Sydney Airport. This isn't just another job to buy the latest gadget from PC magazine.

And before we blame the poor equipment provided by the company don't forget that everybody gets the same - pit crew to pilots. Ask the Ejet Captain/FO that deals with the multiple failures and gets the airplane safely on the ground every single time.

Get "intimately familiar" with that. Go get a "clue" what you are on about before you start sprouting on here fella.

Full service Airline? Full service equipment, systems, culture and new management.

Keep sweeping John.

He will be sweeping faster than a Olympic curler one would suspect

Mr Hat do you mean that Virgin has a NITS Dept too?

(NITS - No I.T. Support). :E

I do not agree ... a contract is a contract, no matter how much you screw the price down.

Just ask any VB passenger, who has paid $5 for a ticket, if they expect a safe, efficient, on-time flight .... same thing.

I've been caught in business before ... mistakingly thinking that just because a Client screwed my price down, he would accept an inferior product ... wrong ... both ethically and legally!

In all seriousness, as a group we get narked when people jump to conclusions about various aircraft related incidents, particularly when the critics aren't in possession of all the facts, nor do they wait for the result of an investigation.

There'll surely be an investigation into this, and it could just be, that despite every one's best endeavours something unthought of occurred. Or, it could just be a stuff up. But surely we should wait for the investigation results before we start crucifying this company, or that, or hurling grenades at people. :8

Same sage advice Capt Claret in the heat of battle.

Many quetions to be asked and answered when the dust has settled.

Fly safe and play hard

Regards to all

Hoss58

I'd tend to think that the reason 'manual check-in' failed is because the procedure was designed way back in the early days - when connecting flights were 'rare' or virtually 'non-existent'. As the company has grown, many of its back up plans have become obsolete.

This is a clear indicator that the company has not grown in proportion to its market share.

Manual check-in works well when it's point to point - but markedly less so when connecting flights are involved.

This seems to be a latent failure on the part of Virgin Blue - regardless of who provides its soft or hard ware.

Every pilot, engineer, and flight attendant out there should take this as a solid reminder - if anything goes wrong, the company will do its best to pass the blame.

lol, you can't actually expect to get to your destination if you only pay $5 for your ticket.

For that price the best you can hope for is a free explosives swab at the x-ray machine :).

Mr Hat, Bravo, Bravo, well said.
Not enough of the "support" staff are aware (or care) of the effort flight crew, ground crew and ops staff put in to get the airline to run safely on schedule.

There seems to be a constant battle with the IT systems we have to work with to get our briefings and do our fuel planning...and then waiting for the load sheet...

I'm not surprised the IT system fails for check-in, I am used to it failing for flight planning!

+G

Whats with this 'guests" stuff, when did PAX become guests? And why not wet lease from either JQ or QF? Don't they do that any more in times like this?

When you say "not enough" ... I gather you're referring to the outsourced support staff. Yep, that isn't going to change, they support 18 other companies aside from DJ - so caring for the flight crew, cabin crew, etc. isn't high on the list of priorities.

Outsourcing for the win eh ... :rolleyes:

Yeah I disagree. The term "guest" works when you stay at an iconic hotel like perhaps " Raffles " or the " Waldorf " or entertaining a guest in your own home. Not a low cost airline. When you have commentators bagging the term on the radio its time for a rethink.Virgin really needs to drop most of the baggage (and terms like those) from the Godfrey era and grow up.:ugh:

The system crashed again this morning at 5:00am, it was fixed soon after only resulting in a "few" delays.

teresa green why would they want to lease any more A/C ? The aprons were full of A/C they just couldn't get the right pax on the right one:)