Saw that a similar story on this was posted below, but not the exact one. Hope I'm not posting redundantly.

Interesting for an allegedly complaint sector, eh?

(For educational purposes only, etc.)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Year 2000 software glitch that could have caused controllers to briefly see planes in old positions was fixed Thursday as government officials played down union charges that it could have endangered passengers.

snip

The problem had the potential to cause computers that help air traffic controllers manage high-altitude traffic to display images of where the planes had been up to 10 seconds earlier.

FAA certified all its equipment as ready at the end of June but precautionary testing has continued.

The union representing technicians that fix the air traffic control system equipment, which is in contract negotiations with the FAA, said the federal agency has scrambled to fix the system while maintaining a public facade that everything was under control.

"After bragging about compliance, the agency has to scramble at the last minute to meet its responsibilities," said Professional Airways System Specialists regional vice president Tom Demske.

FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto said the problem was a genuine Y2K glitch involving confusion over the 2000 date but one that would require an exact sequence of failures in the "host" computers. Those computers manage data at 20 FAA centers that track planes at cruising altitude.

Takemoto said the "host" computers have a backup data saving system that is designed to quickly provide the most recent information on aircraft positions in the event of a host computer failure.

For the fault to occur, one part of the data saving system would have to fail just before the year change and carry the 1999 date over to 2000.

FAA computer specialists on Tuesday discovered that if the host system crashed and had to reboot just after the rollover to Jan. 1, then it would choose the 1999 backup data rather than that labeled 2000 because "99" was a bigger number than "00

-- Ludi (ludi@rollin.com), December 31, 1999

Answers

The y2k wackos keep hoping for something to go wrong, even exagerating trivial stories like this one. But with y2k marghing across the globe with no problems, they're starting to feel pretty stupid by now.

-- weare (laughing@you.com), December 31, 1999.

weare,

I hereby grant you permission to bite me.

-- Ludi (ludi@rollin.com), December 31, 1999.

LOL, Freudian slip? Ludi, in your intro you typed "complaint" rather than compliant. hehe

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), December 31, 1999.