Sorry if this was already posted...didn't see it.

R.

www.cnn.com/TRAVEL/NEWS/9904/12/malaysia.airport.ap/

******************************************************************************** Computer failure at Kuala Lumpur airport causes blackout, delays

April 12, 1999 Web posted at: 1:29 p.m. EDT (1729 GMT)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- A computer failure at Malaysia's new international airport caused an hourlong blackout, delayed flights and stalled escalators, forcing travelers to lug bags five flights of stairs to departure gates, according to news reports Monday.

Full power was restored at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport after three hours Sunday when a backup power supply was provided by the country's main utility company, Tenaga Nasional. The airport's own backup generator was activated but shut down after 10 minutes, airport officials said.

Almost all operations at the multibillion dollar airport are linked by a central computer. The system failure is the first major meltdown since July, when the airport opened with massive teething problems.

"Due to the shutdown, the passenger check-in system, baggage handling system and the aerobridges -- but not the runway lighting -- could not function as normal," Muhammad Adnan Yahaya, general manager of Malaysia Airports, was quoted as saying in the Star newspaper.

Photographs showed mobs of passengers milling around the airport. At least 11 flights, including four international flights, were delayed.

Passengers were stranded on two planes to which electronic aerobridges, the covered passageways that link planes to the arrival hall, were unable to connect. Engineers were investigating the outage, which also caused blackouts at two nearby hotels.

Malaysia hopes the capital's airport will woo travelers from Singapore and Bangkok to become the new regional hub for Southeast Asia.

It has also tried to assure the public that there will be no massive glitches at midnight, December 31, when experts expect the dreaded "millennium bug" to attack computer systems unprepared to digest the number 2000.

Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), April 13, 1999

Answers

The problem is apparently not related to Y2K, but this could be a sample of what to expect next year at some airports.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), April 13, 1999.

Weird how we keep reading over & over that back-up generators fail. It's becoming a consistent constant.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), April 13, 1999.

...computers fail in weird and wonderful ways....and when they fail, the impacts will sometimes be worst in places totally unexpected, in systems totally unexpected, in ways they totally unexpected.....

Guess they "unexpected" their backup never to fail, eh?

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (Cook.R@csaatl.com), April 13, 1999.