New meltown at Virgin check-in Andrew Heasley February 15, 2011 - 6:36PM
Virgin Blue looks to have suffered another nationwide meltdown of its check-in system, according to angry messages being sent on social networking platform, Twitter.
Angry messages about a failure of the check-in and boarding systems started rolling in from Virgin Blue passengers in Sydney Airport at 4.43pm, at Hobart airport at 4.46pm, at Canberra at 5.01pm, at Melbourne airport at 5.07pm and at Brisbane at 5.21pm.
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It is believed Virgin Blue staff are processing check-in and baggage manually, a slow and laborious task.
Six Virgin Blue flights due to depart from Melbourne are now listed as "delayed", some by an hour or more.
Other peak-hour flights managed to take off up to an hour late.
Some flights were two hours late leaving Sydney late this afternoon.
It is not known at this stage if the failure is on the same scale as the disruption caused by a system failure last September that lasted 11 days, which the airline blamed on its computerised reservations systems supplier, Navitaire.
In last year's outage, Virgin Blue estimated it cost the airline $15 to $20 million in lost earnings, and the company was finalising its negotiations with Navitaire for financial compensation.
Those talks were delayed when the Queensland head offices of Virgin Blue flooded in the New Year storms.
More to come...
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