Passengers grounded for second night

Some Virgin Blue customers will be stranded for a second night, with the airline
blaming its information technology producer for sending its booking system into a
tailspin.
It took almost 24 hours to fix a critical system outage which wiped internet
bookings and reservations and affected check-in and boarding systems.
Virgin Blue group executive Andrew David on Monday said the booking system run by
Navitaire had failed and there was no back-up method.
"About 50,000 passengers and 400 flights were affected," he told reporters in
Brisbane, adding that nearly all the backlog would be cleared by Tuesday morning.
Stranded passengers had been offered hotel accommodation, travel to and from
airports, re-booking on Virgin Blue or other airlines, and a free flight to be used
within 12 months.
"I am pleased to tell you we had a very productive day today and the queues at
Melbourne and Brisbane have all but disappeared, and in Sydney we have a minimum
queue time," Mr David said.
He said action against Navitaire was being considered.
"The service agreement Virgin Blue has with Navitaire requires any mission critical
system outages to be remedied within a short period of time," Mr David said.
"This did not happen in this instance."
At least 18 flights were axed on Monday while airport delays of at least 30 minutes
left cranky customers congesting terminals.
Some of them had already spent Sunday night in airport hotels after the computer
system crashed about 8am that day.
The technical issues were sorted out early on Monday.
A preliminary report found that although Navitaire was able to isolate the point of
failure relatively quickly, moves to repair the device "proved less than fruitful".
Some passengers would have to spend a second night in alternative accommodation, a
spokeswoman told AAP.
She was unable to give an exact number of passengers affected or say if one
particular state was affected more than others.
The company was also forced to scrap its daily "happy hour", which offers those
booking flights between 12pm and 1pm (AEST) a fare discount.
Virgin Blue said more than 45,000 people would be moved through its network on Monday.
"We again apologise to all guests who had their travel plans disrupted during the
past 24 hours," the airline said.