Travel Question for Ed Y. and others

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Howdy. Just read that Ed Y. is on east coast and getting ready to travel to FL. Ed, are you flying or driving? And any comments you have on flying right now. Anybody else have comments to make on flying, commercial or private. Thanks, Be Well, granny-TX

-- granny-TX (westamyx@bigfoot.com), January 20, 2000

Answers

granny-TX,

I sent one of my sons back to Chicago on Jan 4th, with some trepidation; but aside from the usual delays and hassles, there were no problems.

My wife and I flew from Albuquerque (ABQ) to LaGuardia (LGA) via Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) on Jan 12. The ABQ-DFW leg of the trip was a little late, but basically okay. To our surprise, the DFW-LGA flight had been cancelled, some two hours before departure time -- because, as we were told by the ticket agent, LGA had been experiencing extensive air-traffic delays. Unfortunately, I found that to be a content-free explanation, and I asked for details; the only thing she would say was that the same DFW-LGA flight (a Delta flight) had been canceled the day before. Anyway, we got re-routed from DFW to Boston, and then took a shuttle flight to LGA. Aside from the usual hassles and delays, everything was fine.

I know a couple people who flew on Jan 1st; they had no problems either.

There were, as you know, two or three FAA incidents during the first week of Jan, and it was never clear (to me, anyway) whether they were Y2K-related or not. There were also a couple of strange stories about problems with aircraft in Saudi Arabia (a Boeing 777) and Denmark (a 767, I think, but not sure); again, these were unusual, but not attributed to Y2K. And there is the huge mess with "gunky" fuel in Australia, which has grounded 5,000 small planes...

I would assume that if anyone on this forum heard, saw, or experienced any significant problems with flights in North America, Europe, Asia, etc, we would hear about it. Not so sure we would hear anything about air-transport problems in some of the banana-republic third-world countries.

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), January 20, 2000.


Inter-island air travel in Hawai'i is about normal...recent flights were on time (actually, that may be slightly better than normal!).

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), January 20, 2000.

My job is meeting plane. outside of weather delays I don't THINK there are any real, current problems.

CHuck, a Night Driver

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 20, 2000.


Since this thread is addressing safety of air travel, let's revisit a very interesting news item from the Times of London on 9 January.

Does anyone have any technical follow-up about the 777 with "computer problems" while on the runway in England? Here is the news item as a reminder:

* * * * * * * * * * 'Millennium bug' hits aircraft News Brief Section, London Times, 9 Jan 2000

A suspected millennium bug fault has struck a British Airways jet. The Boeing 777, en route to Dubai from London, was stranded on the runway at Heathrow yesterday after the cockpit computer crashed and defied attempts to restart it. BA said the incident was just a glitch. Up to 200 passengers waited for five hours before the aircraft was replaced with another Boeing 777. * * * * * * * * * *

FWIW, a later news item gave an official "denial" by British Airways that the problem had anything at all to do with Y2K.

Did the Times reporter/copy editor hallucinate the existence of a Y2K angle (certainly out of character for 99 percent of the mainstream media) or what? Has anyone seen ANY further news on this?

--Andre in southcentral Pennsylvania

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@health.state.pa.us), January 20, 2000.


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