China air traffic controls to be Y2K free by June

BEIJING, March 30 (Reuters) - China's air traffic control systems will be freed from any problems arising from the millennium computer bug by June 30, the official China Daily said on Tuesday.

China had contingency plans to protect its air traffic management system against Y2K-related failure, the daily quoted Zhou Arong, deputy manager of China's Civil Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Mangement Bureau as saying.

Zhou was attending a five-day meeting organised by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in Beijing, the newspaper said.

The contingency plans would allow international flights to continue safe operations in China, ICAO traffic management official John Richardson was quoted as saying.

China's aviation sector has computerised most services and security systems in recent years and its new booking system was pronounced Y2K-free last week.

The Y2K computer bug threatens to jam systems in 2000 when some computers could confuse the millennium with the year 1900, since early software writers used just two digits to specify the year, in order to save space. ^REUTERS@

-- Norm (nwo@hotmail.com), March 30, 1999

Answers

Norm,

I understand there's some Chinese Airline Exec's looking for a "Few Good Men" to take their place on some flights come 1/1/2000. Why don't you volunteer.

-- Won Flu Lo (comefly@withme.com), March 30, 1999.

Here's a recent post on how the air traffic control systems are doing in THIS country. Not a pretty picture. <:)=

Aviation update - industry mag publishes data

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 30, 1999.