Virgin Blue passengers face delays throughout today while the airline clears a backlog of passengers caused when a computer problem stranded 4000 passengers stranded at Melbourne Airport yesterday.
Virgin Blue spokeswoman Amanda Bolger said a glitch caused 48 flights to be cancelled and delays to dozens of others. She said it would have a knock-on effect throughout today, but Telstra had fixed the fault and ‘‘the operation was back to normal’’.
‘‘Everything is back up and running. We’re not doing manual check-in, we’re now working to get through a backlog of people,’’ Ms Bolger said.
‘‘We do anticipate there will be some delays for guests travelling to and from Melbourne today.’’
The Canberra Times's James Massola reports from Melbourne airport:
At least a dozen Virgin Blue and Virgin Atlantic flights have been delayed or cancelled at Melbourne airport today.
The delays and cancellation come after 47 flights were cancelled at the airport yestrday after the airline's computer system crashed.
Passengers flying to Canberra on the midday flight had to endure another delay of more than hour, while passengers booked on the 10.30am flight were forced to wait until 1pm.
The 2.30pm flight to Canberra from Melbourne was also cancelled, but Virgin Blue staff said all passengers had been placed on other flights.
James Brown, from gilmore, and Jess Ellis, from Narrabundah, said they were appalled by Virgin Blue's handling of the cancellation.
Ms Ellis said they had waited five hours for their flight yesterday before finally being told they had to fend for themselves.
"We heard Virgin Blue saying they gave people food vouchers and accommodation but we didn't get any of that," she said.
"They said we would go on Qantas but then they said 'fend for yourself'. We will never fly with Virgin Blue again."
Mr Brown said the couple had been lucky their hotel had had a spare room.
"They didn't give us anything - we were on hold for ages to customer services and didn't get anything except a voucher, which is no use to us as we don't fly often," he said.
"Then they told us to talk to ground staff about accommodation, who told us to call the customer services line again. We are not happy.
Hundreds of passengers were left stranded because of the computer meltdown, which affected the electronic ticketing system and forced staff to process booking manually.
Many passengers said they received poor treatment from Virgin Blue staff, who directed passengers to contact the company's "guest services" hotline after initially telling passengers they would be placed on Qantas flights.
Passengers flying to Canberra on the 5.45pm flight yesterday waited 2 hours before being told they would not be put on a Qantas flight.
Some passengers were even forced to sleep in the airport. The airline's guest services hotline instructed stranded passengers to organise hotel accomodation through virgin blue ground staff, but many passengers complained they were then told to organise accomodation themselves by ground staff and apply to the airline for a refund.
Most stranded passengers were placed on flights today, but some opted to fly out of Melbourne last night at their own expense.
Earlier report continues:
A damaged cable under the airport brought down the airline’s telecommunications service provider, crippling its passenger check-in process from early afternoon yesterday.
‘‘It wasn’t our computer system that crashed,'' Virgin Blue spokeswoman Amanda Bolger said. ''That’s something we want to make very clear from our end.’’
However, Telstra said it was investigating the mutual failure of both its systems and Virgin Blue’s.
‘‘The problem involves a complex set of interconnected issues across a combination of Telstra and Virgin Blue’s systems,’’ a Telstra spokesman told The Age.
Ms Bolger said Virgin was still waiting for a full report from Telstra about what caused the problem. She said Telstra technicians restored access to the airline’s computer systems about 10.30pm.
Passengers were being checked in and boarded manually, adding to the delays.
Ms Bolger said the airline arranged overnight accommodation for travellers who did not live in Melbourne.
‘‘Those who are based in Melbourne have gone home and will, hopefully, be placed on flights (today),’’ she said.
‘‘We used hundreds of hotel rooms to accommodate travellers, the majority in Melbourne but some in Sydney too. We handed out thousands of meal vouchers.
Flights that managed to leave Melbourne yesterday faced delays ranging from minutes to a couple of hours, Ms Bolger said.
All domestic destinations were affected but flights to Sydney were worst hit.
Ms Bolger asked people who are affected by the delays today to ‘‘please be patient’’.
‘‘Our teams is doing all we can to get everyone where they need to go as soon as they can.
with SMH and wires
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