Insurance companies will determine if airplanes fly

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This article in Wired News says that insurance companies will determine whether or not airlines will fly come Jan. 1, 1998

http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/16008.html

Best regards,

Anna

-- Anna McKay Ginn (annaginn@aol.com), November 04, 1998

Answers

I would expect (giventhe reference) that the delay would only a few days - they (the insurers) should be able to judge rather quickly whether their customers could fly. Within liability limits, which might be safer than the FAA's "we will successfully compute at any price" attitude. See the other stories on that site.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 05, 1998.

This must be a dumb question, but:

If the insurance companies can tell other businesses & individuals that they will not cover damages due to Y2K failures, why wouldn't they do the same thing to the airlines? Wouldn't that put the burden of responsibility back on the shoulders of the airlines? I mean, their management would have to decide if they wanted to risk the farm, they wouldn't be able to say the insurance companies would or wouldn't cover them.

Wouldn't you like to believe that if there was ANY doubt, the airlines would ground themselves rather than risk even one life?

I'm getting depressed again. Rats.

-- Arewyn (nordic@northnet.net), November 05, 1998.


You won't get a pilot to take off if he thinks its unsafe, insured or otherwise. (Commercial pilots don't have ejector seats). Equally if there's no reason not to fly, there's no way the worlds airlines will collectively allow their fleets to sit around on the tarmac. They'll arrange mutual insurance between themselves if Lloyd's won't do the job for them.

So: expect (almost) everyone grounded in time for 1/1/2000 unless it's very clear by then that there's no problem (which seems rather unlikely to me). Take-offs will resume as soon as some sort of normality is restored, be that the next day, the next week, or later...

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), November 06, 1998.


I agree - and most likely first a transfer or shuttle-type flight on Sunday morning (with only the crew on board) by the different passengers before they run passenger flights.

There are other things too that might fail - scheduling of planes, maintenence, workers, flight deck and luggage crews, in-meal service, gas, luggage handling systems (at both ends of every flight), power (at both ends of every flight), intermittent (outside of airport radio beacons and the local control towers, regional and international control stations, military airspace restictions, etc.

Further down the food chain, the rental car systems at each end are just as important as the plane to its business passengers. Though I doubt an airline would cancel flights to say Salt Lake City, just because the Hertz terminal was dead, but if there were no power in Denver, or the luggage system in Denver had failed - no one would fly there.

So Denver's airport Y2K impact is a DS 9, but Orlando's is a DS 2.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 06, 1998.


Ooops. The above should be:

..(with only the crew on board) by the different airlines before ....

I just remembered that passengers have a hard time flying by themselves. The more correct term for "unaided passenger flight" is "free fall." Geese seem to do okay by themselves, but they're evidently not too bright - they keep returning to the North every spring ....

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 06, 1998.



I'm new to this site and may be repeating info already available. One of the largest U.S. airlines has discreetly informed its flight crews that no planes will be in the air at midnight on 1 Jan 2000. The present plan is to back up several hours from the (pardon the horrible reference) drop dead time of "planes must land" and stop all flights. They will insure that no possibility of delays will endanger a flight from landing. When I was given this information in September, I was told that the airline would not make this public for quite a while.

-- MRL (````````@`````.```), November 26, 1998.

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