Tune changing on airport problem

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Apparently the latest story is that they won't say whether or not it's y2k-related. (according to what I just heard on CNBC)

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), January 06, 2000

Answers

I'll wager anyone on the board that the final outcome is...... (drumroll)........

NOT y2k related.

Whew!

-- Me (me@me.me), January 06, 2000.


It's definitely Y2K related.

-- (tristar@horel.net), January 06, 2000.

It is just strange to read This Is Not a Y2k problem everywhere.

I read yesterday a report about something one of many and they actually said "we have no idea what caused this problem but its not Y2k related" all the computers in this companie are down :-)

Denial, denial, denial .... happy happy joy joy.

-- RickJohn (rickjohn1@yahoo.com), January 06, 2000.


It is pretty funny. First the scrolling banner at the bottom of the TV screen..."This is not a Y2K problem...This is not a Y2K problem..."

Last I heard on a news radio feed, an official FAA spokesman (unnamed) stated, "We do not know the cause of the problem."

I know I would prefer the scrolling banner to say, "We do not know the cause...We do not know the cause..." Actually, that would sum up the entire history of Y2K---*We do not know*

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), January 06, 2000.


The report said they switched to a backup computer so it doesn't sound like a Y2K problem to me unless you believe backup computers are more compliant than primary ones!

Just why would an FAA computer wait six days before crashing if it was doing real-time calculations? The same goes for the other real time programs, they would all have crashed on the first day.

That is something I expect more of computers running weekly jobs. We'll see how they get on over the next few days.

Regards,

Shuggy.

-- Shuggy (shimei123@yahoo.co.uk), January 06, 2000.



So when does the grace period run out on the Federal Y2K legislation? 90 days?

Not... No... Never... Nada. My corporate lawyer says so.

It will be "interesting" to read the new quarterly 10-Q filiings in a few months time.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 06, 2000.


Who cares? It is no different than normal FAA problems.

-- JoseMiami (caris@prodigy.net), January 06, 2000.

"The report said they switched to a backup computer so it doesn't sound like a Y2K problem to me unless you believe backup computers are more compliant than primary ones!"

Maybe, maybe not.

IIRC, IBM insisted that the ancient computers were definitely not y2k compliant, and the FAA claimed that they'd made changes to them to allow them to work for a while after the rollover.

I *also* recall reading about a *lot* of major problems with the new computers *before* 1/1/0.

PS: the Official Denial just arrived. CNBC just reported it.

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), January 06, 2000.


Well, that's it then. We KNOW they would never lie to us, right?

Kook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), January 06, 2000.


These kinds of things are not a rare occurrence. If the media were not watching for computer failures,these would not even be newsworthy. Maybe it's Y2K, maybe it isn't but TEOTWAWKI is simply not coming about!

-- DAVID (tdavidc@arn.net), January 06, 2000.


DAVID,

define TEOTWAWKI?

-- (-@-.-), January 06, 2000.


You guys need a new schtick. If this turns out to be nothing then you're just going to have to move onto another doomsday scenario.

Here, I got one for that will last forever. In about 3,000,000,000 years the sun will run out of enough mass to keep it's stability and will explode, engulfing the Earth.

Now you see, there is horrible disaster you can all talk about for generations to come, and NOBODY can prove you wrong. No more pollies, no more media spin... it's GOING to happen.

Better start preparing now and avoid the rush in 2,999,999,999 years 11 months, 30 days from now when the "herd" starts sniffing the air and pawing at the ground.

-- (blah@blah.blah), January 06, 2000.


Ron,

I don't believe it could be a date/time processing error but I concede it could be due to a non-date bug introduced during Y2K remediation and the lack of full testing that may have ensued up to rollover.

In that case, the FAA are both right and wrong when they say it is not a Y2K problem!

Then again who can tell the difference between such a glitch and a "normal" glitch?

Regards,

Shuggy.

-- Shuggy (shimei123@yahoo.co.uk), January 06, 2000.


The important consideration is the total number of failures and how they effect the economy over a period of months. We will not be able to determine which ones are due to Y2K date errors, sloppy remediation, etc. The important thing to watch is the total number of failures and if the rate of failures is increasing.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), January 06, 2000.

Maybe it doesn't even matter. The problem is that the air traffic control computers are *decades* out of date, and whether it's Y2K or something else that keeps crashing them matters very little to the folks in the planes being shuffled around the sky by stressed-out ATC operators using little slips of paper and a big map.

-- Nigel (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), January 06, 2000.


Thank you, and well said Nigel. In a previous thread I stated and will reiterate here again, that on any given day/week/month from the mid 1990s on to 12/30/99 there would have been similar numbers of outages and failures of ATC infrastructure due to the age of parts of the system, non-ATC interfaces, system dependencies and capacity issues etc. Even with the newer equipment and computers that have recently been installed there are inevitable bugs and glitches to discover and remediate even after months of shake-down testing at the tech center. There's nothing like real time operations on location to shake hidden bugs loose in complex systems, sometimes it takes a year or more to uncover them all.

Whether this thing in Boston Center is a Y2K failure or not is simply irrelevant to the controllers dealing with the traffic even though it is of some interest to those on this list. Controllers and system techs have testified before Congress, talked to the press and to anyone else that would listen about the state of the ATC infrastructure and the "stretching the limits of capacity" demand upon the system due to increasing air traffic volume much to the boredom of those entities and the general public. Folks, this is unfortunately not new news. Many times press releases like the one put out by PASS (Professional Airways Systems Specialists, FAA tech union) regarding the failures at Nashua, that have been posted on this list several times (or those put out by NATCA, National Air Traffic Controllers Association, FAA controller union regarding other failures) never make it to the local paper much less the evening news. The media appears to only want to hear about a failure if there were multiple and long delays that can't be ignored or if there were incidents like near mid-air collisions.

My point is, if the Y2K roll over was still two years away from now, as the system is presently, we would still have these types of ATC system failures for a multitude of reasons. Y2K may be a good thing for the FAA after all, as it forced them to speed up deployment of critical systems to replace some of the oldest vacuum tube technology.

I simply think it is counterproductive to dissect the possibilities of an ATC system failure or partial failure with other non-aviation oriented list members. Facts are always hard to come by even for insiders, the press is notoriously inaccurate about technical matters (those of you techies that have been interviewed know this to be true) and ATC is the nearest occupation to voodoo to John Q Public. Very few folks know exactly what we do, even fewer have been in ATC towers much less approach controls or enroute centers, it is a complex system for the uninitiated. I still get asked if I hold the light wands at the airport to park the jets. Such is the nature of the system.

As far as I can tell from direct experience and from my various contacts across the country, Y2K presented nothing more than the usual for controllers around the nation and as far as the roll over itself, (both UTC and local) traffic was so light it was a non-event.

-- Cathy AKA Ramp Rat (ldalcorn@alaska.net), January 06, 2000.


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