Virgin Blue Reservation System Went Down Again
Out for another two hours on Wednesday
Virgin Blue airlines in Australia suffered yet another reservation and check-in system crash Wednesday morning from 0510 to 0700 AEST, various news outlets reported. The reservation system suffered a meltdown last Sunday morning that lasted into early Monday morning and affected over 50,000 Virgin Blue passengers.
ABCNewsreported that "passengers at Brisbane Airport were being checked in manually and flights were delayed at Melbourne, Sydney and Darwin airports. There appeared to be no delays at Adelaide or Perth airports."
The reservation system, which Virgin Blue said had suffered only a "slight glitch", was able to return to "normal" but operated slowly for the remainder of the morning, news reports stated.
Virgin Blue had been accused by ABCNews of banning news media from its terminals when word of the reservation system crash leaked out. The airline denied that was the case. Instead, it blamed the Australian Federal Police's (AFP) desire for keeping the media out to avoid adding to the passenger congestion.
Uh-huh.
Robert N. Charette is a Contributing Editor to IEEE Spectrum and an acknowledged international authority on information technology and systems risk management. A self-described “risk ecologist,” he is interested in the intersections of business, political, technological, and societal risks. Charette is an award-winning author of multiple books and numerous articles on the subjects of risk management, project and program management, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A Life Senior Member of the IEEE, Charette was a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award in 2008.