Virgin suffers new check-in system outage

Virgin Australia yesterday suffered a disruption to its check-in system that delayed passengers by up to half an hour in airports across the country.

The issue was resolved at about 5.30pm. At the time, a spokesman said the airline was investigating the cause of the outage.

“We experienced a brief disruption to the Accenture Navitaire reservations system this afternoon, however we continued to check-in customers during this time,” he said.

“We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers as a result of this brief disruption.”

Virgin Australia has been using Accenture subsidiary Navitaire’s New Skies platform for reservation and check-in processes since mid-2009.

The companies last year reached an out-of-court settlement over a Navitaire hardware failure that Virgin blamed for the cancellation of at least 116 flights in September 2010.

Earlier this week, a number of global airlines were affected by a three-hour check-in systems outage due to a faulty network component at IT provider Amadeus.

The outage reportedly delayed thousands of passengers -- including those of British Airways, Qantas and Cathay Pacific -- from about 5pm Central European Time on Monday (3am on Tuesday AEST).