The U.S. air traffic control system passed a live test to see if it could cope with the feared Year 2000 computer glitch known as Y2K, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday. FAA officials had staged a dress rehearsal on March 27 and lesser tests on three prior occasions. The test data will be subjected to further analysis over the coming days.
Time is one minute prior to entering the new millennium in our test systems.
It went right through the sound barrier very nicely. There were similarly successful results across an array of FAA computers, including those that track ground traffic, airport weather and the status of landing lights and remote radio beacons. Ray Long, head of the FAA's Y2K program, expressed the irony of the evening before the test began. That is especially troublesome in aviation, where computers track airplanes from takeoff to landing. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. .