Virgin Australia has revealed plans to dump its Navitaire online reservations and ticketing system in favour of a rival service from US IT company Sabre.
Virgin Australia has revealed plans to dump its Navitaire online reservations and ticketing system in favour of a rival service from US IT company Sabre.
The move comes just over one year after Virgin suffered a meltdown in the Navitaire system that disrupted the travel plans of up to 50,000 passengers, saw airport terminals choked, and forced Virgin Blue – as it then was – to accommodate thousands at city hotels while flights were rescheduled (CDN, Sep. 28, 2010).
At the time, Navitaire rushed technical experts and top executives to Australia, but the damage was done. The US company – a subsidiary of Accenture – eventually agreed to pay a significant amount to Virgin over the incident. The total payment was not revealed, but Virgin had earlier estimated its losses at $15-20 million.
