Latest on Virgin Blue Check-in Systems Failure

A number of travelers booked with Virgin Blue woke up with a sigh of relief when the airline announced that all was ok. These travelers had faced inconvenience of a high degree as the airline’s check-in systems were thrown out of operations on Sunday and remained precarious until early this morning.

The systems have been brought back on track not before another jolt surfacing at 0500 hours local time this morning which reduced the airline’s functionality again and cast fear in the minds of those who were to get some relief today. Good news is that the airline described the problem as minor and a result of some tests that were run on the systems. The situation is largely under control and the airline sources state that the staff is working to reduce the backlog of passengers who were affected by the delay in flights. It is to be noted that the airline is Australia’s second biggest and is popular for cheap flights.

The airline issued a press release at 1600 hours on its website stating that the minor trouble in the check-in systems caused some consequential delays due to cancellation of two domestic flights. The passengers of the two cancelled flights had been put on alternative flights.

There have been apologies from the airline’s top brass which include the Virgin Group’s boss Richard Branson and the CEO John Borghetti. The outage is identified to have been caused by a hardware failure at Navitaire which is the provider of the New Skies airline check-in platform.

Although the situation has been controlled, experts believe that Navitaire may face legal proceedings from Virgin Blue and the payout may run into many millions as Mr. Borghetti indicated that the carrier is planning to seek compensation for the failure.

Please read the detail news here on Virgin Blue Check-in Systems Failure

Cold Water over Virgin Blue Aspirations

Virgin Blue received a major blow with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) giving a tentative decision against the airline’s cooperation strategy with Delta and Air New Zealand. This is a major setback to Virgin Blue’s plans of putting up a serious challenge to its much bigger rival, Qantas. As per the ACCC, the alliance can kill competition in the trans-Tasman market of air passenger service. ACCC further pointed out that Virgin Blue is a major competitor to Air New Zealand and the alliance will jeopardise competition on numerous trans-Tasman routes. ACCC also justified its stand by clarifying that more than a million passengers will face an adverse impact if competition between Virgin Blue and Air New Zealand comes to an end. In other words, there would be a shortage of cheap flights. However, these observations have not been well received by many industry experts.

Insiders point out that some years back, Australian authorities granted approval to cooperation proposal between Air New Zealand and Qantas. This proposal had a much more far reaching impact and could not go through only because New Zealand Commerce Commission rejected it on the grounds of adversely impacting competition in New Zealand’s domestic sector. Both airlines had captured about 80% of the market at that point of time. This has naturally caused many to raise the question as to why this alliance was given the nod from Australia, while the current one has been shelved.

In fact, industry experts have gone on to point out many other flaws with the ACCC decision. These are:

- Credibility of calling Virgin Blue ‘Maverick’

- Tiger Role

- Competition is Presently Unsustainable