Aviation insurers have challenged airlines to prove that their fleet avionics are free of the "millennium bug" which threatens to disrupt computer software, or lose their cover for any incidents which result from it.
The issue, says a major Lloyds insurance-market underwriter, is what may happen to embedded computer microprocessors at midnight on 31 December, 1999. Some, programmed with dates which recognise years only as two digits, will see the "00" as a reversion to the year 1900, which could affect the system software.
British Aviation Insurance Group chief underwriter Tony Medniuk says that airlines have been sent a checklist of actions, and any carriers which cannot demonstrate compliance will lose cover.
Some airlines have provisionally decided to ground their fleets for a short time on 1 January, 2000, to carry out final checks. Medniuk says that he is surprised by "-how little this issue seems to have been discussed in the industry."
The International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations is about to dispatch a letter to all aircraft and avionics manufacturers expressing the Association's "increasing concern" at the lack of information on what steps are being taken to address the issues, which it describes as as ranging potentially "from catastrophic to nil".
Source: Flight International
