For anyone who kept track of the news over the weekend or, potentially, anyone who happened to have a flight booked with Virgin Blue anywhere in Australia on Sunday, you will know full well of the delays caused by an IT failure. Now, regardless of where you place the onus of responsibility—blind rage at Virgin Blue or the external hardware failure by the company that runs their IT systems—the fact remains that an epic technology-related failure was to blame here.
It may feel like a long time ago, but there was a day when people caught domestic or international flights without a reliance on web bookings, check-ins or anything computer-related for that matter. And yet, on Sunday the Virgin portions of domestic airports were overflowing with angry and stranded people who were ultimately let down by some sort of catastrophic computer failure.
Even yesterday morning when I was at Sydney airport, there was still a throng of people waiting to be checked in to early flights, or assumedly, left over from the day before and trying to get to where they needed to be. While I was there, Virgin staff announced that the IT system had come back to life, but they still had to manually process the four early morning flights in a very slow process. Ironically, the so-called manual process involved entering the details into an offline laptop: a less dynamic technological system to cover for a failed but more automated technological system. Once the manual boarding process had ended at the check-in counter, the laptop was rushed down to the gate to get everybody onto the plane.
What I’m really wondering is why there wasn’t a better backup procedure in place in case of such events. It seems to be a fair assumption that Navitaire, the company responsible for Virgin’s check-in and reservation system, will most probably be kicked to the curb after this particular stuff-up that will surely cost Virgin not only a lot of money, but a big dint to their public image (even though, in all fairness, they weren’t directly responsible).
I dare say that in true reactive human fashion, something like this will probably never happen again—at the very least, to Virgin—as there will be resources pushed into creating/demanding some sort of reliable means of ensuring that these recent events aren’t repeated; or, should such an event occur again, a robust backup system that kicks in and takes over.
Have we become so reliant on technology that we become less efficient than not-so-long-ago times when our technological systems go awry?
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