Resumen
In this article, the author focuses on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA's) Y2K preparedness. The problems facing FAA were the mainframe computers acting as central computers, for most of the Air Route Traffic Control Center were antiquated vacuum tube systems and were water-cooled. It was warned that hardware and the code that handled water pumps cooling the tubes, may fail due to Y2K noncompliance. In addition, when the software managing communications for the national aviation was written, programmers truncated date fields, in order to save space and time. A contingency plan was drawn. In addition to making the current legacy systems Y2K compliant, the old legacy systems have been replaced with new IBM G3 systems. In the unlikely event the new IBM G3 systems fail and the current legacy systems fail, the FAA could rely on a system known as Direct Access Radar Control (DARC). If DARC failed, air traffic controllers may have to resort to manual control of airspace. After extensive testing, FAA is confident that the U.S. air traffic control system will be fully operational well into the new millennium.