Singapore Airlines cancels 100 year-end flights

Asian Economic News, Jan 3, 2000

SINGAPORE, Dec. 30 Kyodo Singapore Airlines (SIA) said Thursday it has canceled 100 flights toward the new year due to low demand and the risks related to the Year 2000 computer bug.

One-hundred of 475 flights between Thursday and Saturday were canceled to avoid "having aircraft in the air at midnight on Dec. 31" and also due to "the low demand for air services on many routes" during this period, according to the airline.

Another 40 flights were rescheduled.

"We operate a lot of medium and long-haul services that fly through the airspace of many countries, and we do not have enough information on every one of these countries to be 100% certain that no disruptions will occur," said SIA Deputy Chairman Cheong Choong Kong.

"As with any airline, SIA's services can be affected by the failure of systems that are not directly related to aviation," the airline said.

"For this reason, SIA has taken the precaution of canceling or rescheduling flights that would have been in the air at midnight on Dec. 31 in different time zones," it said.

Nevertheless, it said it is fully prepared for the rollover into the year 2000 and does not expect any significant problems.

SIA's sister airline, SilkAir, is not affected by the rollover into 2000 because its schedule does not require any aircraft to be in the air at midnight in any time zone.

Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore said Singapore's Changi airport has been affected by 243 cancellations of flights that were scheduled between Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.

He said that as of Dec. 28, the last flight scheduled out of Singapore on New Year's Eve is a Malaysian Airlines shuttle flight to Kuala Lumpur, which will depart Singapore at around 11:20 p.m. and will arrive before midnight.

The last arrival at the airport is a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis in the United States at around 11:50 p.m.

Singapore is a major air hub in Asia, and 64 airlines stop in Singapore, with more than 3000 flights a week. In 1998, 23.8 million passengers passed through the airport.