Virgin Blue Denies Media Ban, Blames it on Australian Federal Police

The Virgin Blue airline has denied being responsible for  a media ban affecting its terminals around Australia which occurred after their reservations systems have once again crashed earlier today. Virgin Blue stated it was actually the Australian Federal Police (AFP) who kept the media away from terminals to avoid an increasing congestion.

Due to the technical failure, all passengers had to be checked in manually, resulting in thousands of Virgin Blue customers being delayed in the 5:10am – 7:00am time frame. Although the system error has since been fixed, the check in application is still running slower than usual, still causing some inconvenience to passengers.

“We have had some delays this morning because of that outage, but we’ve got the systems operational again,” Virgin Blue’s Colin Lippiatt said.
“As I say, there will be some delays but we’re getting back to normal throughout the morning. We’re urging everyone to arrive at the airport at their normal scheduled check-in time.”

This is not the first time the Virgin Blue computer system fails. A similar incident happened on Sunday, causing hundreds of flight delays and leaving travelers stranded in airports across Australia. Today’s incident led to passengers at Brisbane Airport being checked in manually and flights were delayed at Melbourne, Sydney and Darwin airports.

A spokeswoman for the airline described this morning’s problem as just a “slight glitch”, adding the issue emerged during tests on the book-in system. The Virgin Blue staff are now working to clear the backlog of delayed passengers and IT problems have been sorted out.

While apologetic about the delays and inconvenience experienced by Virgin Blue customers, the airline also said that information technology provider Navitaire is actually to blame for the technical failure, implying legal action is currently under consideration.