Flying colours: Japan Airlines vice president and regional manager, Hong Kong and Macau, Katsuyuki Arai with this year's JAL scholarship holders and ex-scholars. The two outstanding scholarship program winners of 1999 were Hong Kong's Lau Yi Sau and Liu Pui Yee.Japan's major airlines are well on the way to becoming Year 2000 compliant.
The country's aviation giants - All Nippon Airways (NH) and Japan Airlines (JL) - have already completed Y2K inspection and remedial works, including simulation tests in mission critical systems. Mission critical systems include aircraft, flight operation information systems, aircraft scheduling, crew scheduling and maintenance.
ANA said checks on other routine international operations are expected to be completed by the end of September. It estimated the system overhaul would cost about ¥4 billion.
"All systems are on schedule to be compliant by the rollover date, but contingency plans have also been created to avoid service interruption due to non-critical system delays during the date rollover," said NH's assistant manager, public relations, Kate Opekar.
JL director international public relations Geoffrey Tudor said the airline had allocated about US$100 million for the Y2K project.
JAL has started taking bookings on its reservation computer system for the 1999/2000 year-end/new year period with no glitches so far.
"We intend to operate our normal services - and whatever extra flights are required - during the millennium change period," Tudor said.
Although JL's systems are expected to be 100 per cent millennium-compliant, Tudor said the airline would make changes in flight schedules if any problems were be encountered.
"Where there is any risk to the safety of our operations, we will take the necessary steps to eliminate that risk - by re-routing, cancelling or diverting flights or by any other means," Tudor said. "This is nothing new, but the practice which responsible airlines follow day in day out, whatever the season, whatever the time of year, all year round," he said.