Perspective: Millennium holds no fear of flying bugs

by Colin Barker

Forget talk about the cost of the year 2000 to industry and taxpayers. Forget scare stories about computer chaos forcing companies out of business come the millennium. There is only one question the man in the street is asking ? will it be safe to fly when the clock ticks over to the next century?

There are actually two questions the man in the street wants answered, but the second concerns a technology that never works anyway ? video recorders ? so I?ll pass it by.

So will it be safe to fly? No one knows ? yet. But that doesn?t stop scare stories on the subject, quoting spokespeople from various airlines.

It had better be safe because an awful lot of people plan to travel at the turn of the millennium. There has been heavy demand for trips on Concorde, the only plane that can carry passengers faster than the sun moves across the Earth. It will be possible to greet the new millennium in London and then cross the Atlantic to join the party in New York.

But will it be safe? Well, it should be, since Concorde is fairly ancient. If you are ever lucky enough to visit its flight deck, you will notice that the control panel has more in common with a Spitfire than a Boeing 747-400. It is covered with old-fashioned clock-faced dials and indicators. No millennium bug problems there.

There are, of course, a lot of 1969-1973 vintage embedded processors around the place. But these should be relatively easy to fix in comparison with the systems in the ?all glass? cockpit of the 747-400. This aircraft has 3,500 date-sensitive routines, a reliable source informs me.

Will Boeing get them all fixed in time? I hope not. Without all those jumbos cluttering the sky, Concorde can fly untroubled across the Atlantic. So long as JFK airport?s automatic landing system is fixed, it should be easy to get into New York. This plan looks better all the time.

So, as far as European airlines are concerned, air travel should be safe in the new millennium. It will be safe because, if it isn?t, the airlines are not going to fly.

Civil aviation may be reliant on computer systems but this is also just about the most safety-conscious industry in the world. Despite the occasional exploding engine, it maintains a very impressive level of passenger safety. Critical systems work with a high level of redundancy ? there are three auto-pilots on the average passenger aircraft ? and the planes are exhaustively checked, as are the aircrew.

So what is the problem with the millennium?

The answer lies in the popular imagination. Most people are, at best, nervous about flying and some are terrified of it. Passengers are an easy target for anyone wishing to encourage fear ? rich pickings for tabloid editors looking for a new angle.

They should be looking elsewhere. I am not worried about flying in the new millennium. But I am concerned about what would happen if I had a heart attack or another serious medical problem. That is something to really worry about.