Hungarian jet circles for four hours due to glitch (computer problem)

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Hungarian Jet Circles For Four Hours Due To Glitch

BUDAPEST, Oct 18, 1999 -- (Reuters) A Hungarian Malev airliner bound for New York circled over Hungary for nearly four hours because of a defunct on-board computer, before finally landing back in Budapest, an official said.

After pilots noticed the problem, the Boeing-767 aircraft carrying 169 passengers and 10 crew had to consume fuel to reduce its weight from 170 to 120 tons, the maximum allowed for safe landing, an airline official said.

The incident happened Sunday. The plane finally took off late in the day for New York, after the necessary repairs, the official told the MTI news agency.

(C)1999 Copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters Limited.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), October 18, 1999

Answers

Poor Homey, you must be really desperate for material. I think you missed the story about the Tinfoil shortage - Y2K related? Only the Doomers know for sure...

-- Y2K Pro (y2kpro1@hotmail.com), October 18, 1999.

Hey Y2K Pro...

I'll take two bugers to go, hold the pickles please. And make it snappy kid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Shakey~~~~~~~~~~~~

-- Shakey (in_a_bunker@forty.feet), October 18, 1999.


Y2k Pro,

Now that I have your attention, this your chance to show off that big brain of yours. Philadelphia Gas Works has this computer glitch, please tell them how fix it, get back to us when it is solved.

PGW puts callers, bills, pipes on hold

Don't take it personally if you're still struggling to get through on the phone to PGW with questions about your bill.

You're in good company. Lots of it. In fact, PGW's latest internal analysis of incoming phone calls in August shows the following:

Incoming: 185,802.

Answered: 75,504.

Abandoned: 110,298.

That means almost 60 percent of PGW customers who tried to get through on the phone with questions or complaints couldn't do so.

But PGW's top brass doesn't stop at stiffing normal customers looking for information. Members of the Philadelphia Gas Commission don't fare much better.

At Tuesday's commission hearing, John Foulkes, who was sitting in for commission member Jonathan Saidel, wanted to know if the new phone and data system was working yet. He never got an answer, other than some indecipherable double-talk about just how very, very difficult it is these days to switch from an old to a new computer system.

PGW's new president, Ben Hayllar, was asked why the cash statements that PGW is supposed to file every month with the commission had not been produced in either August or September. He simply said, "We don't have them," and that was that.

No apology. No explanation. No remorse. In essence, Hayllar told the commission that the company's new computer system ate his financial records. He assured everyone that everything was A-OK, but had no financial records, for the last three months, to back him up.

PGW's credit rating with Wall Street may be ready to blow up in everyone's face, but neither Hayllar nor the Gas Commission has any advance warning.

Thanks to creative bookkeeping, however, that probably won't happen. At that same commission hearing, the guru in charge of installing PGW's dysfunctional data system innocently explained that the company had shifted about $40 million of the computer costs onto the company's capital books to make sure the regular books passed muster with Wall Street. No one blinked.

Nor did anyone blink when the commission tried to get answers to another potentially explosive issue - PGW's plans to repair or replace leaking gas lines. Ten years ago there were 93 blocks throughout the city which had experienced six or more breaks and there are now 224 such blocks.

Instead of expanding its repair and replacement schedule, however, PGW is now replacing pipes at about half the rate that it's own studies suggest is both needed and appropriate for its aging system.

No one knows how serious the problems are, or how much it will cost to fix them. But Hayllar told the commission he's hired a new engineering firm to study it and has a tricky, some might say risky, financing scheme to pay for any needed repairs.

In essence. his plan involves refinancing about $100 million in existing PGW bonds in a deal described as producing PGW about $6 million, risk-free, as long as interest rates don't rise too much. But anyone buying the argument that Wall Street will give PGW $6 million "risk-free" ought to be buying the Brooklyn Bridge, not PGW bonds.

Meanwhile, the only people no longer at risk from the ongoing insanities of PGW are deadbeats. Thanks in large part to that dysfunctional data system, efforts to collect those deadbeats' bills by phone have totally collapsed.

In August 1998, PGW selected 19,187 of those accounts for collection by phone, tried to do so 26,852 times (calling some customers more than once) and connected with 6,713 customers. In August of this year they selected, attempted and connected with the grand total of "zero" customers. That's right. None.

So now we head into winter, which raises still other problems for PGW. Having lost the chance to cut off deadbeats in the summer, often for lack of even trying, PGW must carry them until next spring because it's next-to-impossible to shut folks off in the winter.

Simultaneously, PGW must pray for a cold winter to replenish its skimpy cash accounts from regular customers just to pay its bills and keep Wall Street happy.

However, PGW can't really afford an extremely cold winter because freezing ground breaks water pipes, which creates still more gas leaks. Yet PGW has no systematic plan for fixing pipes already identified as troublesome, nor enough cash to do so.

Yet thanks to a computer system that doesn't work, it can't easily or reliably improve its cash flow. Tens of thousands of deadbeats are effectively off the hook and 110,298 customers calls were abandoned in August - a total of 872,118 through the entire year - as customers tried to figure out what to pay, when and why.

Is this a crazy company, or what?

W. Russell G. Byers is senior editor of the Daily News. E-mail is Russell.Byers@Phillynews.com and phone is 215-854-4789.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), October 18, 1999.


;-D

Just love ya Homer!

Oy vey... Y2K Pro-lite! You're just "amazable" in your personal density level.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), October 18, 1999.


OK, now this is getting weird. Even I, Doomer par excellence according to some of my friends, haven't had much concern about airplanes' on-board computers. Did Malev just not install the necessary upgrades and other engineering changes, or did someone accidentally pour caviar all over the avionics, or what?

According to Boeing's Website, the 767 is the most widely utilized airplane across the Atlantic. Let us all hope that this was just a one-off failure, and not a blip on the radar with more bogeys right behind it.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), October 18, 1999.



It does not matter. Think happy thoughts. Planes will stay in the sky.

-- brainwashed sheeple (party@New.Year), October 18, 1999.

Link for the PGW article: http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/99/Oct/07/local/BYER07.htm

(Hope this link works. Not too up on HTML coding)

In re. the article, I don't really think the issue is all Y2K, rather, just incompetence in PGW. Still, glad I don't work on their customer service lines... :)

-- James Collins (jacollins@thegrid.net), October 18, 1999.


My boss sent me this today (I deal with irate physicians all day when something goes bad with their electronic claims processing)

For all of you out there who've had to deal with an irate customer, this one is for you. An award should go to the United Airlines gate agent in Denver for being smart and funny, and making her point, when confronted with a passenger who probably deserved to fly as baggage.

A crowded United flight was canceled. A single agent was rebooking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, "I HAVE to be on this flight and it has to be FIRST CLASS."

The agent replied, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these folks first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out."

The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "Do you have any idea who I am?" Without hesitating, the gate agent smiled and grabbed her public address microphone. "May I have your attention please?" she began, her voice bellowing throughout the terminal. "We have a passenger here at the gate WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to the gate."

With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the agent, gritted his teeth and said, "F*** you!"

Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to stand in line for that, too."

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 18, 1999.


Great one Lisa... I'll have to remember that one!

-- (cannot-say@this.time), October 18, 1999.

Hey Folks,

This sort of thing happens all the time. Here was a plane bound for New York, a long flight. They found *something* they didn't like and decided not to "go for it" as far as the flight plan is concerned. Then, instead of dumping fuel, they just burned it up. In many cases, the problems that develop for the airline due to a fuel dumping situation are more of a headache than to just sit up there and burn it. I have personally been there, done that. And, any complex computer driven equipment, like a 767, can have all sorts of glitches in normal operations. The crew did the right thing, cancel the flight, and go back to their base where the maintenance was ready.

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), October 18, 1999.



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