Airports on time with
Y2K work

By Christine Donnelly
Star-Bulletin

Honolulu International Airport and the 14 other state-run airports are ahead of schedule in fighting the "Y2K bug," good news for an island economy dependent on the steady arrival of tourists, the airports' administrator said.

"We're extremely happy with the progress so far and are very well ahead of schedule. I'm confident air travel will be normal," Jerry M. Matsuda, head of the state Transportation Department's Airports Division, said yesterday.

The aviation industry worldwide was to report today on Y2K readiness.

Ninety-nine percent of Hawaii airports' critical computer hardware, software and embedded microprocessors have been assessed for Y2K problems and fixed or replaced if necessary, Matsuda said. About 25 percent of the fixes have been validated and the rest will be by Sept. 30, he said.

One major component awaits repairs -- passenger jetways that have embedded computer chips -- but that is to be done by the end of July, he said.

Matsuda budgeted $3 million for the work, about 50 percent of which is being done by outside contractors. The job at Honolulu Airport alone is huge, with everything from luggage carousels, passenger-loading jetways and runway lights to fire trucks having been checked.

The Y2K assessment and repairs began in 1996 and originally had been expected to continue closer to the Sept. 30 deadline, he said. "We got ahead because we gave it top priority and got the funding we needed."

With the rosier outlook, he now plans one disaster simulation in October, rather than five as initially considered, to test response to worst-case Y2K disruptions such as power outages.

Although today was the deadline for airlines and airports worldwide to report Y2K readiness to a United Nations-based aviation group, the traveling public won't know the overall results until later this summer when the U.S. government plans to issue travel advisories based on the survey data.

The United States, many European countries in Europe and the developed areas of Asia are expected to avoid major Y2K-related travel disruptions, but experts express greater apprehension about developing nations.

Matsuda said he had been assured by U.S. and foreign carriers flying into Hawaii that they would be Y2K compliant.

Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday it had finished all year 2000 work on its 628 computer systems and is awaiting outside validation of the work.

The so-called Y2K or millennium bug arose because many older computer systems record dates using only the last two digits of the year. If left uncorrected, such systems could treat the year 2000 as the year 1900, generating errors or system crashes.