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To: Josef Svejk who wrote (27423)	2/3/1999 11:42:00 PM
From: Captain Jack	Respond to of 31646

Josef----------- Not a chip thing but indicates the amount of work going on, & on & On..... Travel industry braced for crucial Year 2000 test By Andrew Hay NEW YORK, Feb 3 (Reuters) - After working for a half decade and spending of billions of dollars, the world travel industry will find out on Thursday if the big airline reservations systems on which it depends are ready for the year 2000. Flight-booking systems are able to work either 330 or 331 days in advance, meaning that Feb. 4 is the first day that customers can buy tickets for flights departing on Jan. 1, 2000, a date that could be mistaken for Jan. 1, 1900, if the industry's efforts prove ineffective. That could spell chaos. ''Everyone has been talking about Jan. 1 as a key date but it's Feb. 4 for us,'' said Ronnie Hauptman, Galileo International Inc.'s Year 2000 director. More than 100,000 travel agencies that book around 80 percent of all flights depend on systems operated by just a handful of computer reservation system (CRS) companies. If those companies and their partners are able to handle the year 2000 rollover on Thursday, the date-dependent travel industry will have shown it is well on its way to crushing the once-dreaded Y2K bug. The Year 2000 or Y2K problem stems from the once-common practice of using only two digits for recording the year in computer programs, like 99 for 1999. That shortcut has the potential to confuse computers and software that have not been prepared to read the date correctly, causing them to put out bad data or not work at all. Hauptman, based at Galileo's Denver operation, plans to be up all night on Thursday watching for rogue data flashing across her screens. Galileo, the world's second-largest CRS company handles about a third of world travel bookings. Sabre Group Holdings Inc. (NYSE:TSG - news), the No. 1 travel reservation company, handles another third. Spain's Amadeus Global Travel Distribution -- in which Iberia [IBLI.CN], Air France , Lufthansa(quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: LHAG.F) and Continental Airlines (NYSE:CAIb - news) own stakes -- is a major player. WorldSpan, in which Northwest Airlines (Nasdaq:NWAC - news), Trans World Airlines (AMEX:TWA - news) and Delta Air lines (NYSE:DAL - news) have interests, is a fourth big CRS. On Thursday, one of the biggest challenges facing these companies, and the airlines and travel agents that depend on them, is the Year 2000 readiness of suppliers and vendors around the world. Analysts are watching to see if CRS companies can protect their networks from data that is not ready for the year 2000 and handle internally any problems that may arise. Some airline companies have taken year 2000 bookings since Jan. 3, and cruise line companies have taken them since last year. All of that has passed without incident, analysts said. Nancy Raynor, a vice president at Sabre, expects 90 percent of suppliers to have their systems ready for year 2000 dates. The company plans to stop non-Y2K compliant data at the door, and continue to do so until that supplier is Year 2000 ready. She expects Feb. 4 to give the industry a good idea of how heavy demand will be in the first days of 2000, amid concerns by some that the computer bug could cause service disruptions or even accidents. That may discourage people from traveling. To be sure, the travel industry will still face some key Y2K tests after Feb. 4. While airlines and car rental companies take their first bookings on Thursday, hotels handle their first reservations for the year 2000 on Friday. Sept. 9, 1999, creates a row of four nines that could fool some computers into deleting data or make them crash. Then there is the big day itself -- Jan. 1, 2000. Still, if the industry can get past Feb. 4, it can probably get past anything, analysts said. ''It really just is an acid test of how successful they've been in year 2000 compliance,'' said Dillon Warburg's Michael Stellwag, ''whether or not they've made the right investments.''