Virgin Blue receives first report into systems failure from Navitaire

Virgin Blue announced (27-Sep-2010) it received its first report from IT provider Navitaire on the cause of it's hardware failure and subsequent outage of the airline's internet booking, reservations, check-in and boarding systems. Navitaire advised the carrier that while they were able to isolate the point of failure to the device in question relatively quickly, an initial decision to seek to repair the device proved less than fruitful and also contributed to the delay in initiating a cutover to a contingency hardware platform. The service agreement Virgin Blue has with Navitaire requires any mission critical system outages to be remedied within a short period of time, which did not occur in this instance. Check-in and online booking systems were operational again by just after 05:00 on 27-Sep-2010. Head of Operations, Andrew David, stated the airline will be seeking compensation from Navitaire for the disruption and is considering legal action (ABC News/World News Australia, 28-Sep-2010). Virgin President, Sir Richard Branson, apologised to passengers for the delays (Sydney Morning Herald, 28-Sep-2010). A further 17 flights were cancelled on 27-Sep-2010 (AFP, 27-Sep-2010). All flights are now running and the carrier has commenced rebooking flights for affected passengers. [more]