Passengers delayed as Virgin’s check-in system crashes
There was chaos at airports across the country on Monday afternoon when Virgin Australia’s check-in system failed, forcing lengthy delays on customers.
The airline said in a tweet about 1pm that the outage had affected its entire check-in system.
“As a result, we are experiencing congestion at a number of our check-in halls at ports and some flights have been delayed,” it said.
It warned passengers to expect delays Australia-wide.
Customers took to social media to complain about the hold-ups, and being unable to print boarding passes or baggage labels. Among them was ABC Grandstand commentator Zane Bojack, who said there was chaos in the terminal at Brisbane Airport.
Absolute chaos @BrisbaneAirport with @VirginAustralia computer system down. Passengers stuck in baggage lines for hours.. can’t print boarding passes or bag tags #Shambles pic.twitter.com/NpEcYPsSCa
— Zane Bojack (@zanofc) May 13, 2019
Impressed to see how VA staff dealt with the chaos. Not easy. Our flight only delayed 1/2 hr at this stage.
— President Lisa Trump 🌸🌸🌸 (@Carmilla5) May 13, 2019
Massively impressed with @VirginAustralia staff at the Melbourne domestic terminal today – there is an entire system outage and there’s a lot of confusion, agitated customers.
I’ve observed staff being amazingly patient and kind.
It’s not fun but these things happen.
— Jason Imms 🅽🅸🅲🅴 (@jasonimms) May 13, 2019
https://twitter.com/xenoyr_official/status/1127761900995956736
Others complained about being likely to miss international connections because of the delays.
In response, Virgin said the outage was a technical issue. IT teams were working to resolve it, is said, but gave no timeframe for resolution.
Our IT teams are currently working to resolve this issue. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and will keep you updated as more information comes to hand.
— Virgin Australia (@VirginAustralia) May 13, 2019
The Virgin Australia IT outage follows the failure of electronic passport machines at Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane airports on April 29, causing lengthy delays for international passengers.
