December 29, 1999
Web posted at: 4:48 a.m. EST (0948 GMT)

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- Eighty international flights through Mexico City on December 31 have been canceled because of poor demand.

"For December 31, we had planned 780 flights, some of them early on January 1. About 80 have been canceled," said the director of Mexico City International Airport, Roberto Canovas, in an interview on Mexican radio on Tuesday.

Canovas did not specify the airlines that had grounded planes but said the cancellations affected flights from 6 p.m. (7 p.m. EST).

Mexico City, the country's main airport, typically handles 800 flights a day, and expects to record traffic of more than 20 million passengers this year.

Canovas said he thought the lack of interest was due more to passengers being eager to get to their destinations early than worry over possible computer failure caused by the Y2K computer bug.

Mexico's virtual airline monopoly Cintra said it had changed its itineraries and canceled two flights scheduled for December 31, as a precautionary measure against millennium bug computer glitches.

"Now, because of the Year 2000 the itineraries are being organized so that most of the flights arrive late on Friday and resume operations in the early hours of Saturday," a Cintra spokesman told Reuters.

The official said Mexico was still deciding whether to suspend operations completely, in line with directives from the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Association (ICAO), the specialized United Nations agency created in 1994 to promote and set standards for civil aviation.

The ICAO recommended operations be suspended between 5:45 p.m. (6:45 p.m. EST) and 6:30 p.m. (7:30 p.m. EST ) on December 31 and between 11:45 p.m. December 31 (12:45 a.m. EST January 1) and 12:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m. EST) on January 1.

Francisco Bernal, public relations coordinator for Mexico International airport, said the airport was completely millennium compliant and would operate throughout the night of December 31 with no interruption.

"The Mexican International Airport has been preparing (for Y2K) for the past year and a half," he said. "All computerized systems and equipment, from fire engines to the control tower, are all ready for the switch-over to the double zero," he added.

The Y2K problem refers to potential shutdowns or disruptions in computers programmed to read only the last two digits in a year. That could make them unable to tell whether the date advances to 2000 or recedes to 1900 at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999.

Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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