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December 10, 1999
Web posted at: 3:10 p.m. EST (2010 GMT)

From Charles Zewe
CNN Dallas Bureau Chief

DALLAS (CNN) -- If you plan to travel over New Year's weekend, you might want to check with your airline because many U.S. carriers are canceling flights.

Southwest Airlines, the largest U.S. discount carrier, says it will shut down from 10 p.m. on December 31 until 8 a.m. on January 1, in each of the nation's four contiguous time zones. "It didn't make sense to have the full schedule," says Ed Stewart, director of public relations for Southwest, "but it has nothing to do with Y2K."

U.S. airlines say they're fully compliant, having spent an estimated $2 billion to rid flight computers and reservation systems of potential Y2K glitches. Since computers read the year by the last two digits, there is concern that systems could malfunction if they misinterpret the "00" of 2000 for 1900. "The airplanes are not going to fall out of the sky," says Bob Putz, a Southwest pilot. "They're going to fly like they always flew."

Only an estimated 10 percent of all airline seats are booked over New Year's weekend. Stewart says people will be do their traveling beforehand. The way he sees it, "wherever you want to be, you're there already on New Year's Eve and on New Year's Day."

American Airlines plans to have 17 planes aloft at midnight. All but one are expected to be on trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific routes, landing during daylight hours when any potential ground-based computer failures will be less of an issue.

The nation's largest carrier, United Airlines, says it will cut almost a third of its 2,300 daily flights. Delta, Continental and US Airways have similar plans, as do many non-U.S. carriers.

In part, high fares to New Year hot spots have chased passengers away. "We were actually going to go to some exotic location until we found out how pricey that was," says passenger Dirk Bode.

It's believed jitters about the rollover from 1999 to 2000 also are playing into the low number of bookings. Although airline surveys show passengers are highly confident there will be no problems, officials say they suspect that there's lingering worry because nobody knows exactly what might go wrong.

Industry experts, like Tom Parsons at Bestfares.com, agree. "They'd be terrified," he says, "just for the fact that every media source in America and every next door neighbor is going to say: 'I can't believe you're flying midnight when you don't know what's going to happen with the computers.'"

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