China, South Korea Tweak Clocks to Fly Y2K Test

Updated 3:33 AM ET November 19, 1999

BEIJING (Reuters) - China and South Korea this week successfully flew two passenger aircraft that had their computer clocks set to simulate travel into the new millennium, Chinese state television reported on Friday.

It said an Air China Boeing 737 flew from Beijing to Seoul on Thursday evening while an Asiana Boeing 737 headed in the opposite direction. Both planes landed safely shortly after a simulated midnight on January 1, 2000, it added.

The planes carried only airline employees, state television quoted a civil aviation official as saying.

"When we passed zero hour in the air, all the systems ran normally and it was more smooth than we expected," an Asiana crew member was reported as saying.

The Y2K, or millennium bug refers to a problem that might occur in older computers which denote years only by their last two digits. The risk is that 2000 maybe read as 1900, causing computer systems to crash or other malfunctions.

The Chinese aviation official said the test covered a wide range of areas including air traffic control, radar systems, safety systems and ground lighting.

Another official was quoted as saying the test proved China's civil aviation system was millennium compliant.

======================================= End

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), November 19, 1999

Answers

So what does this test prove? We're not so concerned about airplanes, it's support for them such as flight controllers, airport security, baggage handling, etc. ad nauseum.

Few Y2K experts expect Y2K problems in automobiles either, but what good is a Y2K-compliant automobile if there's no gasoline to fuel it with? (Most oil producers and refineries expect, at best, to run at 50% capacity after the rollover.)

-- Charles Brannon (charles_brannon@yahoo.com), November 19, 1999.