WICHITA EAGLE: "[U.S. Air Force] Y2K flight passes test"

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TUESDAY January 4, 2000

Y2K flight passes test
McConnell Air Force personnel demonstrate their Y2K readiness Monday as one airborne tanker transfers fuel to another.

BY Alex Branch
The Wichita Eagle

Air Force Capt. Matt Bowers stood aboard a KC-135 Monday morning chatting about his next mission.

Just another refueling exercise, he said. The tanker will meet up with another KC-135, fill it up and head back to base.

It was just a drill for Bowers and fellow airmen. But the small group of media accompanying him was there for the first flight out of McConnell Air Force Base since the Y2K bug was supposed to bite.

System tests had shown that the computers worked on the ground, but would they work in the air?

"We're completely prepared," Bowers said. "They have been working on this for a long time. There are no doubts."

He was right, of course, and airmen funneled some of the 65,000 pounds of fuel on board through a boom cable from one tanker to the other without the slightest problem.

And McConnell added itself to the growing list of things that have survived Y2K.

Officially, the first flight of 2000 was airborne at 8:46 a.m. with Col. Frederick F. Roggero and Maj. Robert Keirstead at the controls.

The two tankers were connected for about 45 minutes before touching down at 11 a.m.

Sgt. Randy Kelzenberg said that while the first mission after the Y2K scare might sound dramatic, it was just another exercise for the airmen.

The Air Force has been getting ready for Y2K since 1997, and the base created its own Y2K office in April to complete preparations.

It cost about $270,000 to update base equipment. Most of the updating was to ground-control systems rather than to the airplanes, Kelzenberg said.

Roggero said the successful mission just shows that whether it's 1999 or 2000, it's business as usual at McConnell.

"We do about 20 of these a day," he said after the plane landed. "This is just one more."

[ENDS] Alex Branch can be reached by phone at 268-6544 or by e-mail at abranch@wichitaeagle.com.

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 09, 2000

Answers

--thank you for the report, rest of my post not directed at you personally at all, only to fed lurkers and "national security" liars mostly...

--OK, guess I'll do it, I don't get much of a chance lately, and I can take the ribbing...

DANG RIGHT THEY MADE SURE THOSE *&%^%&* CHEMTRAIL SPRAYING FLYING NAZI APES PLANES ARE WORKING!

bet that was RIGHT UP THERE on the ole mission critical list.

"watchout where the big planes go, don't you eat no yellow rain snow..."

ya, me, go for it, oh ya, by the way, anyone find a link for me yet where passenger jets have switched from big wide circles in holding patterns to back and forth turns with really sharp banking? Waiting for that one, lemme see the link, please, c'mon show me, show us, any chemtrail pollys, and oh ya, call a buncha people liars about what they've seen too, you always get off on that. Oh ya part deux, why doncha drag out that ole scientific explanation of normal contrails again, even though that isn't even CLOSE to what people are seeing when they do a chemtrails report, that's good for laffs, too....if it wasn't so obviously important to spend BILLIONS on, and reported by thousands and thousands of people, everyday, people who are ex mil, or cops, or folks with just good eyes and some binox and some cameras..go ahead, call them liars, and me too. If it's for our "good" give us the facts, we can deal with it, if it's for something else.......

now where's those flu statisitics again? you know, the no name weird symptom flu? and what happened to the on again off again west nile fever thing? that disappear, too? Ha! It sure ain't over yet....

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), January 09, 2000.


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