Continental Airlines Advances System In 737 To 2000 While Airborne

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There were no problems. The system was advanced to December 31, 1999, and then allowed to roll over. This was reported on the local Houston ABC station- Channel 13- KTRK. (no links yet) Houston is home to Continental Airlines.

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), April 03, 1999

Answers

Hey, Gayla!!! Thanks for the information! Good to hear something possitive! Now if only everything else could work like that! :-)

-- Blondie Marie (Blondie@future.net), April 03, 1999.

Gayla,

Here's a link to a video and an article on that. After reading it, there's still one thing I'm not sure about. Was the test successful because of Y2K remediation, or because the systems always were Y2K compliant?

http://www.newstream.com/99-130.shtml

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(APRIL-1999) -- Continental Airlines successfully completed an airborne Year 2000 (Y2K) test of its aircraft communications system, simulating a date change from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000. Continental is the first commercial airline to fly an aircraft in a simulated Year 2000 environment.

Continental Airlines flew a Boeing 737-700 over Houston, Texas, for one hour, demonstrating a December 31, 1999 passenger flight originating and returning to Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport. The test flight focused on the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), a data link-based communications system installed aboard all Continental Airlines aircraft. ACARS consists of internal systems, located on the aircraft and throughout Continental Airline's computer networks, and an external system of ground receivers and a sophisticated national and international network of computers owned or leased by ARINC Inc. The date-related systems on the aircraft, including the flight management computer, were reset to the last hour of the last day of the century.

"The results are consistent with what we expected. The airplane doesn't care what day it is, or what year it is," said senior vice president and chief information officer Janet Wejman.

As part of the airline's Year 2000, project, Continental Airlines is in the process of ground testing the ACARS system on other aircraft in a computer simulated Year 2000 environment. These tests are part of a larger goal to prepare the airline for the coming millennium change.

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-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), April 03, 1999.


This is all very well but the objective of flying for (most) of us is to land safely.

How would this virtual aircraft land in say an eastern european airport that, due to circumstances that i don't need to go into here, on new years' day 2000 has problems with it's...

Take your pick...

Power grid supply

Runway lights

Radar

GPS systems

Radio communications

Approach Beacons

etc. etc.

Airports in the USA "may" be up to snuff, what about the rest of the world?

Anyone here planning on flying on New Years' Day?

Other than the hapless Chinese y2k airline remediation managers and guinea pi... pilots...?

Do you feel lucky?

This so called successful test means absolutely NOTHING.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), April 03, 1999.


Glad to hear communications work.

-- SCOTTY (BLehman202@aol.com), April 03, 1999.

This is good news (but not unexpected). I doubt they allowed this "rollover" aircraft to interact in a post-2000 mode with any part of the ATC system. Seems to have been an internal aircraft check only. Most of the FMS (Flight Management Systems) of recent vintage were known to be Y2K compliant already. It will probably be written up in Aviation Week & Space Technology. If it is, I will post to the board any relevant technical info. Still, it is a solid piece of good news and I am grateful for that.

-- RD. ->H (drherr@erols.com), April 03, 1999.


Continental Airlines regrets to announce that it's Y2K test on an airborne 737 was a failure. We will be notifying the next of kin shortly.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 03, 1999.


Thanks for the responses, and thank you Kevin for the link. :-) While this may just be communications, I'm glad they are at least starting to test things.

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), April 03, 1999.

Thank you Gayla. I'm glad they're testing too but I wont be flying at that time. Uh...nope...not...no way : )

Given that there is so much written regarding the "self fulfilling prophecy" in the banking system if people pull their money out, I wonder if anyone has thought about how a large slow down in travel around the rollover will impact the economy?

Mike ================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), April 03, 1999.


Well -- staying up in the air is way neat. Getting back down to the ground OK is also much to be desired. That test can't be run until the ATC system is in the loop, also simulating rollover. But I'm not worried. I can't afford to fly anyway.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), April 03, 1999.

Andy wrote:

"This so called successful test means absolutely NOTHING. "

Well, it's certainly true that the whole system is composed of many elements, and they all need to work correctly to fly safely. Proper testing should involve one element at a time, holding the rest constant so as to best determine which elements have which problems (if any).

This sounds like a good test of one element. It's a step in the right direction. Complex systems cannot be evaluated using all-or-nothing thinking. Insisting that no test can be meaningful is simply wrong. Just because we have a long way to go doesn't mean progress is meaningless.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 03, 1999.



Flew this thing over Houston for an hour, did they? They could have had A LOT of "next-of-kin" to notify if the test hadn't been successful... Testing over a heavily populated area doesn't sound real bright to me.

-- just sunshine (lurkinghere@ho.me), April 03, 1999.

Ummmm ... any embedded systems in a 737?

Jeannie

-- jhollander (hollander@ij.net), April 05, 1999.


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