Minister to wager his life that flying is safe

PHUKET: Thailand’s Minister of Transport and Communications, Suthep Theuksuban, will fly from Bangkok to Haad Yai next Friday. Nothing unusual in that, except that the THAI aircraft in which he will fly will have its computer clocks set to December 31, 1999. During the flight they will tick over to January 1, 2000, to test whether the airline’s jets are safe from the Y2K bug. Computers in the control tower at Haad Yai airport will have their clocks similarly adjusted to test Y2K measures taken by the Airport Authority of Thailand (AAT). Announcing the flight at a press conference at Phuket International Airport, Capt ML Yoom Ghornrot, the chief of the AAT’s development section, said that the AAT has been working for the past two years to ensure that Thailand’s airports are immune to the Y2K bug. The Phuket Airport Authority had its own Y2K trial run two days ago, he said. It included, among other things, rehearsals of emergency drills. As a result, said ML Yoom, some changes have been made to the plan to ensure greater efficiency in response to an emergency. He added that Phuket’s airport is now fully up to AAT expectations.