Virgin Blue awaits Telstra report on cable failure

Virgin Blue was awaiting a post-incident report from Telstra after a cable outage in Melbourne forced the cancellation of 48 flights yesterday.

A spokesman for the airline said it was "getting back on track today" following a "telecommunications fault" at Melbourne Airport.

The airline provided scarce details of the fault in a "minor incident report" on its website.

But an article in the Sydney Morning Herald claimed a damaged cable under Melbourne Airport had led Virgin Blue to initiate manual check-in for passengers and cancel a number of flights.

It claimed up to 6,000 passengers had been affected.

The Virgin Blue spokesman was unable to shed light on whether or not there was a redundant link in place at the airport - or indeed why connectivity did not  failover to any secondary line once the fault was detected.

"I can't speak for Telstra regarding what the problem is as we are still waiting for a report from them," the spokesman said.

A Telstra spokesman told iTnews that services had been restored at 11pm last night.

But he said "the exact cause of the fault is not clear and remains under investigation".

"The problem involves a complex set of interconnected issues across a combination of Telstra and Virgin Blue's systems," the spokesman said.

"While services have resumed, Telstra's senior engineers and executives continue to monitor the situation and work with Virgin Blue to understand what happened and why."