Max Kingsley-Jones/TOULOUSE
Airbus Industrie set up a task force several years ago to examine the potential impact of the Y2K software problem on its aircraft. The consortium has concluded that there are only a few minor issues that will affect its products. It does, however, warn that it cannot take responsibility for items over which it does not have control.
The Y2K issue at Airbus is being tackled by a 14-strong team headed by project manager Terry Whiting, based at the consortium's Toulouse headquarters. The team is dealing directly with the partners - Aerospatiale, British Aerospace, Deutsche Aerospace Airbus and CASA - as well as customers, vendors, legal issues and the media. Airbus is aiming to have secured Y2K compliance by 1 January, 1999, for every system, service and electronic device linked to its products or its business in general.
The project team's tasks have been broken down into a group of key areas:
products (avionics/on-board equipment, engines and ground support equipment);
customer services (technical publications, simulators, courseware, performance engineering programmes, digital data exchange and the investigation team) ;
business systems (infrastructure, applications, communications, data exchange);
product support (spares systems, stock, aircraft-on-ground);
site facilities (headquarters, subsidiaries);
other areas (transport, delivery centres).
John Walker, deputy vice-president of general engineering at Airbus, has been tasked with the product side of the investigation. He says that after at least two years of work the team is now confident of the status of its findings. "The few areas where there are issues are either not business critical or there is a well-defined back-up system available," says Walker, adding that software checks have revealed no areas of significant concern.
There are a few minor Y2K glitches with equipment on all the Airbus models. This occurs when software incorporates a date that features the year abbreviated from four characters to two (ie omitting the century) and uses that date in a calculation. Walker says, however, that "very, very few" aircraft systems include information about the date, and that Airbus is "absolutely confident that there is not a problem. We know where the date is on the aircraft and we know that it is not used in any computation."
As far as minor issues are concerned, Walker says some operators of the original A300B2/B4 have retrofitted Litton's LTNH inertial navigation system. This piece of equipment has a well-known problem that can occur with manual date entry. "Litton already has a solution to rectify the problem," he says.
Early versions of the A310 (the -200) and A300-600, which were the first Airbus models to be equipped with an advanced digital flightdeck, are known to have problems with the display of the Smiths Industries flight management system (FMS). The FMS continues to work correctly, but temporary solutions are being examined, and a service bulletin is expected from Smiths soon.
The A320 family, which is equipped with the world's first digital fly-by-wire flightdeck, suffers what Airbus describes as a "minor abnormality" with the message handling in the built-in test equipment (BITE) for its flight warning computer. Walker says that the problem is "trivial" and no modification is required. Airbus takes a similar view on the minor abnormality that afflicts the A330/A340's BITE message handling in the central maintenance computer.
Two other aircraft-linked Y2K issues affects cabin equipment. The Matsushita 2000E passenger entertainment system has a problem with its credit card validation and the BITE message handling. Walker says Matsushita already has service bulletins available. The other issue concerns the AT&T cabin telecommunications unit, which has had problems with credit card validation and BITE, although the latest software contains a solution and has been incorporated into later models.
Although some investigations into the Y2K problem at Airbus have been ongoing for years, the bulk of the analysis has been undertaken since the second half of 1997. All actions are scheduled to be completed by 30 June 1999. "We have a process which is well under control and we are confident that our customers will have no problems with the operation and maintenance of our products," says Walker.
Source: Flight International
