Flights into the unknown

Despite all their efforts to beat the millennium bug, the world's airlines can't be sure their jets won't crash. Joanna Walters reports from United's Chicago base.

Sunday December 19, 1999
The Observer [London]

Facts and figures are one thing; emotions and superstitions quite another. So it comes as no surprise that despite management confidence about 'Y2K-readiness' from the world's biggest airline, workers in United's own control tower at the gargantuan O'Hare Airport in Chicago take a 'rather you than me' attitude about flying on millennium eve.

Peering out from behind a snowstorm-ridden radar screen at the real airliners represented by the electronic dots, the controller nods to a jet taking off from one of six runways, and says: 'I might travel on The Night. I haven't decided yet. But if I do, I'll certainly let a couple of jumbo-jets take off before me.'

It is tongue in cheek but no one, least of all the pilots, has anything but the experts' word for it that planes will not fall out of the sky when the clock ticks over to 00.01 on 1 January. There is a lot of confidence, but there can be no absolute guarantee of safety, even at one of the globe's leading airports. Rick Juster, United's year 2000 supremo, admitted to The Observer: 'No one anywhere really knows what will happen.'

Chicago O'Hare handles more than 72 million passengers a year through its five terminal buildings, and was the world's largest airport for decades until it was narrowly overtaken by Atlanta two years ago.

It is the home of United, which flies more people more miles than any other airline, and also has huge bases at Washington DC, Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles plus a substantial operation at Heathrow in London.

Juster says the airline began checking its systems for compliance four years ago, and has since overhauled 13,000 'inventory items'.

An item on that list could be anything from a Boeing 747, which itself has a huge number of computers and chips, to a cappuccino machine in one of the business class lounges at a far-flung airport, or the machine that prints wage slips for the company's 98,000 employees.

Juster points out that there are degrees of 'criticality'.

'I do not want my baggage handler eaten by the baggage machine. I do not want my flight crew staying in a hotel where the elevator jams. But my priority concern is: will the aircraft fall out of the sky?'

He firmly believes the answer is no. So firmly, in fact, that the airline is running a normal programme of flights on New Year's Eve, and anticipates it will have at least 25 planes in the air when the new millennium arrives. In a high-profile stunt, United has persuaded one of the leading US Y2K experts to join its service from Chicago to London on New Year's Eve. The plane will be flying when the clock strikes midnight in both the US and UK.

Peter de Jager has not only supervised United's plans but also those of the Federal Aviation Authority, and has addressed bodies as august as the World Economic Forum and the US House of Repre sentatives about the millennium bug.

What most ordinary people will not be aware of is that aviation systems all over the world are set to Greenwich Mean Time - mysteriously nicknamed Zulu Time by those in the business - so computers on aircraft and in air traffic control systems will flip over to 1 January simultaneously, regardless of local time, even if it is only 6pm on the US east coast, for example.

So those of a nervous disposition determinedly boarding flights in, say, California in the afternoon with the aim of getting to New York before midnight local time will be flying at the witching hour, after all.

United is adamant that its passengers will not notice a thing. But it has taken no chances during its meticulous four-year preparation.

Juster says his team went to the aircraft manufacturers - Boeing in the US and Airbus in Europe - and the engine makers, and asked 'all the dumb questions' about all the risks.

United dispatches 440 flights a day from Chicago alone. 'There is nothing with the United aircraft that would cause problems in-flight. I cannot state that for aircraft in general, though,' Juster says.

'The starting point was that they would not be able to navigate or communicate, and that could make them crash. I never thought they would just stop flying,' he says.

Once United was convinced that its planes were safe, it interrogated the authorities at the airports and air traffic control systems it will serve, or even just fly over, on the night, until it was satisfied its operations would not be in jeopardy. The airline will finalise its flight programme in the next few days, based on what is likely to be a very reduced demand from passengers wishing to fly on 31 December.

Meanwhile, a tour of O'Hare Airport reveals that, although impossibly vast and busy, it is, paradoxically, eerily calm as the travelling thousands appear to waltz through its terminals.

The place is so immense that, along with an air traffic control tower to guide aircraft to and from the runways, it also has three ground control towers just for directing jets to and from the five terminal buildings - one each for United and American Airlines and one for everyone else, including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and other foreign and US carriers.

Dozens of flights depart and arrive in waves. United traffic supervisor Don Pechan and three colleagues are poring over their newly 'Y2K-updated' radars, giving parking orders to pilots who have just arrived from Seattle, Dal las, Milwaukee and the less familiar Kalamazoo, Iron Mountain, South Bend, White Plains, Quincy and Cedar Rapids.

Planes large and small are twirling in all directions on the aprons, absorbing or disgorging their teeming hordes, but Pechan is calm. 'It's like clockwork today,' he says.

Inside one of the terminal buildings, a single concourse of shops and cafes stretches as far as the eye can see, packed with whirling humanity and heavy with the scent of popcorn. From Customs to departures, passengers descend into a tunnel that crosses under one of the main taxiways.

Jumbo jets rumble overhead as people hurry along on moving walkways, and the gloom of the tunnel is artfully illuminated with glowing frosted-glass walls and multi-colour tubular ceiling lights.

Down in the tunnel, in a scene reminiscent of James Bond, United's customer services supervisor, Larry Maigler, suddenly touches a corner of one of the innocuous, glowing glass wall panels, and it slides silently back to reveal a hidden hive of activity beyond.

In a soundproof underworld dozens of men in identical boiler suits and baseball caps are driving miniature trucks that collect 50,000 suitcases a day from an eight-mile labyrinth of clattering conveyor belts. Will the daily flotsam and jetsam of Louis Vuitton trunks, shabby holdalls and bewildered pets in cages fall prey to the millennium bug?

'It's all been checked. It's fine,' says Maigler, deadpan. Electronic barcode readers, fork lift trucks, luggage carousels. Check!

Not everything is state of the art, though, even in the US. When one senior US industry executive was asked whether the federal air traffic control system was in mint condition he replied: 'Oh, God, no. It's cobbled together, just like it is in Europe.'

Apparently, most of the radar installations still use vacuum tubes of an obsolete design imported from Poland. Maigler added: 'I'm a Republican, but I wish the government would spend more on modernising the air traffic control system than on the latest missiles.'

However, Juster is adamant that if there is the slightest hitch on New Year's Eve, aircraft will never get off the ground in the first place, so there is no question of them crashing.

And despite the best efforts of the top computer nerds, the last word about whether a flight is leaving will be the pilot's, as it always is. If the pilot is not happy, no one will go anywhere.

United has been assured by the airport and by the city authorities of Chicago that all the basics such as electricity, water and communications will be functioning on The Night, with emergency procedures and power back-ups in place. Juster is confident, despite the universal disclaimer that no one knows precisely what will happen.

But he warns: 'Anyone who was in charge of the whole of Chicago - or any city - would give their priority to hospitals and police stations, not airports. 'I do not know with a straight face if I could argue with that.'

[ENDS]

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), December 25, 1999

Answers

I rest my case John - the man's a certifiable idiot.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), December 25, 1999.

What if planes really do start falling out of the sky?

-- (Here@today.com), December 25, 1999.

"No one anywhere really knows what will happen.''

When they cancel "all flights" next week it will be blamed on the insurance companies. They can say anything they want right now...

-- BiGG (supersite@acronet.net), December 25, 1999.

How about some "real" leadership here Mr. President! Your choice of aircraft!

Got balls?

-- (snowleopard6@webtv.net), December 25, 1999.

[Andy, I'd agree with you - but I suddenly noted, upon re-reading theOBSERVER piece above, that Peter de Jager had also addressed the World Economic Forum. As you well know the annual W.E.O. meeting is the next level down, in the globalist scheme of things, from the annual Bilderberg Conference, and has many overlapping attendees. Are you think what I'm thinking...?

In any event, here's some reassuring reading for those flying across the Atlantic to Heathrow Airport over the New Year....]

ICE RINK NEAR HEATHROW EARMARKED AS MILLENNIUM MORGUE

Sunday, October 17, 1999
SUNDAY EXPRESS, London

An Olympic-sized ice rink close to Heathrow Airport could be used as an emergency mortuary in the event of a major disaster over the New Year, it emerged today.

Slough Borough Council has ordered the closure of the Berkshire town's Ice Arena for more than a week over the New Year period in case it is needed as a makeshift morgue.

The move comes despite official assurances that Heathrow is fully prepared for the so-called Millennium Bug.

The ice rink, home of the British junior figure-skating finals, will be closed to the public from December 26 until January 4, although ice hockey matches scheduled to take place on December 27 and January 3 will go ahead.

A duty manager at the rink said today: "It has been decided that we will be closed to the public, and if there are any fatalities we are the morgue."

The rink is around six miles from Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport.

There have been fears that the Millennium Bug - which causes computers to interpret the date 01/01/00 as January 1, 1900, instead of January 1, 2000 - could cause problems for air traffic control, radar and navigation systems and flight scheduling and passenger ticketing computers.

But those fears have been dismissed by air bosses, who say large amounts of time and money have been spent ensuring all the computers needed to operate Britain's airports are ready for the year 2000.

A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said computer experts had been working on ironing out any problems since 1996.

He said: "It is absolute nonsense to suggest aircraft will be falling out of the sky. "All UK airports have been independently assessed and are Y2K year 2000 compliant."

The spokesman said it was up to individual airlines to decide whether to operate services over the millennium period, but added: "We are not expecting any problems."

A spokeswoman for Heathrow Airport said: "We have spent over #50 million on testing systems and ensuring they are ready for the millennium.

"We are obviously not complacent, but we are pretty confident everything will be operating as normal over the New Year period.

"We always have contingency plans, but we have not requested Slough Borough Council to provide any extra contingencies. Any further precautions they have taken are a matter for them."

) Press Association

[ENDS]

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), December 26, 1999.

John - I most certainly am and I've gone on record several times on this forum as saying that he has been got at by a)being threatened or highley likely in this toe-rags' case b)being promised riches, power, fat contracts for his "consultancy" (what an oxymoron) etc.

There are some great threads on this asshole in the archives.

He has taken his 13 pieces of silver and one day he will pay the piper!!!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), December 26, 1999.

Top,

sold his soul for $67.86...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), December 26, 1999.