<> times per year). Last I looked I've never seen an airport move. My
<> Cessna will continue to fly unimpeded
<
<Unless the automatic control system of some other aircraft fails and
<causes it to fly into you :-(. Not that I believe for one nanosecond that
<this is going to happen due to the change in year.
Correct. NONE of the autopilot systems are date based/biased. Also the
general design of aircraft systems is one of fail soft. Fail soft is
simple fail to the least dangerous mode or disengage for manual override.
So in the case of GPS with databases (maps) they fail such that you can
only use the map for manual reference or emergency modes but the nav
functions (whch way and all) are unaffected. Actually it's less a problem
than that. Likely the ticketing systems or ground baggage handling are
more suspect as they are not "safety of flight".
<don't see why castings and gears and leadscrews and ... would care.
<Actually I can't see why CNC systems would fail either, but manually
<operated tools certainly will keep working.
Unlikely, all the PDP8based system that do have any date function similar to
OS/8 would have seen that problem every 7 years!
<Yes, it's scare mongering. And that's the bigest problem - the public
<panic that this could cause. That worries me a lot more than any minor
<problems that may occur.
All too true.
Allison
Received on Mon Jan 04 1999 - 21:29:56 GMT