This really is Virgin on the Ridiculous

Virgin Blue Minor Incident Report

So, I'm sure by now if you're reading this blog that you have seen my thoughts on the Virgin Blue check-in/reservation/booking system fiasco (Here they are if you missed them, Virgin on the Ridiculous, More background on Virgins IT Systems and Naive Navitaire). It just got a little more ridiculous in my book, they are still using their backup system, which in itself is pretty poor form, and they are planning to switch back over to their main system tomorrow. Here is the statement.

Online and telephone reservations services will be unavailable from 9.00pm AEST on Tuesday 5 October;

• Check in for domestic flights will open two hours before scheduled departure time; three hours for international flights;
• Web check, Kiosk check in and Check-mate will close at 8pm AEST on Tuesday 5 October through to 5am on Thursday 7 October; 

That's right, they expect the switch over to mean that their system will be down for1 day and 8 hours or 32 hours altogether during which time they will be checking people in manually and the phone and online reservation systems will be down.

How crazy is that? So not only did it take Virgin Blue and Navitaire 21 hours to switch over to the backup system apparently it is going to take them 32 hours to switch back to the 'primary' system. What a crock! What an absolute shambles! Is the system that badly designed that they have to untangle a mass of inter related crap instead of changing a few key routers or something like that to switch between the two systems.

I can understand that it would be complicated but anything more than a few hours seems crazy, can't they get the primary up and running in parallel and then flick a switch?

Anyway, thought you might all appreciate an update on the tom foolery.