KOREAN tourist Sangil Lee was curled up on a row of seats at Virgin Blue's Melbourne terminal, the hood of his grey sweatshirt pulled over his head as he slept.

At midday he could be seen sprawled halfway across his bags, still asleep and with his childhood friend Seung Yeol Lee propped up in the seat next to him. By late afternoon the duo had shifted again, and were preparing to see in the seventh hour of their occupation of Melbourne Airport from the chairs of the international terminal.

''When we came to the airport they say that the flight is cancelled and we tried to get the tickets from Jetstar but they were full,'' Sangil said. ''We went to Virgin, they can get us on a flight at 2am.''

The men, both 27, are on a working holiday to Australia and said they needed to get to Kununurra in far north Western Australia to start new jobs this week. They were due to fly to Darwin at 8am yesterday but arrived at the airport to discover, as many travellers did, that their flights were cancelled.

''If Virgin Blue did not have the tickets, we would have lost our jobs,'' Sangil said.

Waiting on seats near them were Sandesh and Richa Kale, who were eager to vent their frustration at Qantas's handling of its global shutdown. Mrs Kale travels to Adelaide each Sunday for work and always flies Qantas. Although she was able to snap up a ticket on a Virgin flight last night, she was appalled by the way Qantas was treating its customers.

''The main thing I found, there was no communication,'' Mrs Kale said. ''You are running a business, you can't tell your clients 'sorry, we can't do anything'.''