I like the manual system... for contingencies.

Diane

At low-tech airport, Y2K fixes came late
FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, December 4, 1999

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/1999/12/04/international1129EST0532.DTL

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

(12-04) 08:29 PST SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) -- Finally, technicians have finished work to remove the Year 2000 computer glitch from the radar and instrument landing systems at this country's main air traffic control center.

Due to a supplier backlog, the final software patch didn't arrive until late November.

The rest of the Y2K work at Las Americas airport was done in October, decidedly late by international standards and leaving little time for testing, but typical for a developing country.

Yet the Dominican Republic is ahead of several others -- including Argentina and Pakistan -- in Y2K readiness, thanks in part to help from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency.

It is difficult to know how many nations are seriously lagging in ridding their air traffic systems of the potentially crippling millennium bug, the legacy of computer programs that read only the last two digits of a year and mistake ``00'' for 1900 instead of 2000.

ICAO says 82 percent of its 185 member countries claim their air traffic services are Y2K ready or expect to be ready by Jan. 1.

But neither the U.N. body nor the International Air Transport Association, comprised of all major airlines, has made public any details of the Y2K information it gathered from airlines, airports, air traffic service providers and government civil aviation agencies.

``It's not good for business I guess,'' says Ed Smart, the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations' representative to ICAO.

Inside the Las Americas' low-tech control tower, the electronics consist only of an altimeter and radios for talking to pilots. The elevator is out of order, so employees hike up four flights of stairs.

Down in the air traffic center, where controllers track 20-25 flights at any one time and more than 150 overflights per day on busy north-south routes, there's considerably more gear.

It has independent generators that power the gear -- a must at an airport where electricity and water outages are a nearly daily nuisance. There are also backup cellular and satellite phones that connect the Dominicans with controllers in Miami and Atlanta.

And, ironically, there is an important legacy of this Caribbean nation's very recent transition to the high-tech world -- a parallel manual tracking system.

Unlike their counterparts in more advanced nations, whose Y2K contingency plans often mandate manual tracking as a backup, these controllers' routine includes keeping tabs on every plane within 200 miles with color-coded placards that they move around on a rack.

``We didn't have an automated system until five years ago,'' when the radar was installed, said Ramon Cruzada, a controller who's been on the job 25 years.

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 06, 1999