It sure gets sticky when airlines switch from one internal reservations system to another -- even when both systems come from the same vendor. Just ask Virgin Blue and Navitaire.
Virgin Blue'sNew Skies internal reservations system from Navitaire reportedly crashed for several hours June 18, causing flight delays and disruptions at Australian airports, according to several reports.
Service has been restored, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The outage was a highly embarassing one as the airline distributed a press release two days earlier saying the $8.7 million [$AUS10 million] migration to New Skies had been "completed over two days of the June long-weekend," ushering in "a whole new class of online service."
Prior to the outage, the airline's chief financial officer, Keith Neate, said: "The cutover to New Skies proceeded according to plan. We had a continengent of customer service agents in place at all major Australian domestic airports and I'm really proud to say the cutover was very successful with minimal or no delays to our network or guests."
That statement turned out to be premature.
Virgin Blue is transitioning from one Navitaire platform to another.
The Australian airline previously had used Navitaire's Open Skies platform.
The New Skies system, which experienced the shutdown, uses a ticketless model, where funds are tied to a customer record and not an individual ticket.
Among the new features, according to Virgin Blue, customers can compare fares up to 15 days surrounding the day they travel; they can book car rentals and hotels; and they can access booking summaries to better track costs.
The new platform also hosts Pacific Blue and Polynesian Blue.
Migrating from one airline reservations system to another can be a gut-wrenching process.
WestJet experienced much disruption last year when it migrated its internal reservations system from Navitaire to SabreSonic.