Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air A-OK For Y2K.

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 10, 1999--

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air announced today that all systems are go for the rollover to the year 2000.

"We're ready," said John Fowler, Alaska's executive vice president/technical operations and system control. "All critical systems have been checked and are Y2K compliant. We're confident everything will go as planned, and by that I mean normal."

Alaska and Horizon have spent the past two years assessing the Y2K compliance of more than 850 computer systems, 214 of which were deemed critical, such as those used to manage payroll, maintenance and engineering, and flight operations.

The carriers also confirmed the Y2K readiness of more than 1,500 vendors, 130 of which were determined to be critical to operations, including fuel providers, power companies, the SABRE computer reservations system and SBS, a vendor that maintains the carriers' crew scheduling databases.

Bob Reeder, Alaska's vice president of information and communications services, estimated the combined cost of both carriers' Y2K readiness program at $2 million.

"We didn't find any one item that would have stopped either Alaska or Horizon from doing business," Reeder said, "but the total of all the things we had to correct would have been tough to address all at once. We spent a lot of time and effort testing everything from top to bottom at both companies."

Although all systems are go for the year 2000, Alaska announced previously that it was scaling back operations from 9 p.m., Dec. 31, through 9 a.m., Jan. 1, due to lighter than expected passenger traffic. All told, Alaska has canceled 169 flights during that 12-hour period, or about 18 percent of its flights each day.

Horizon has canceled about 250 flights from 8 p.m., Dec. 31, through 9 a.m., Jan. 1, or about 25 percent of its flights each day.

Even with the cancellations, Alaska and Horizon plan to have at least 70 additional employees on hand to monitor systems at key times throughout the rollover.

The most significant rollover for the aviation industry will occur at 4 p.m. PST when air traffic control computers worldwide switch over to the year 2000 at midnight, Greenwich Mean Time.

Other key times throughout the evening are: -- 9 p.m., PST: Crew scheduling systems based on the East Coast

rollover to the year 2000. -- 10 p.m., PST: SABRE reservations system in Tulsa, Okla., and

Alaska's easternmost airport operations in Mexico rollover to the

year 2000. -- 11 p.m., PST: Alaska's remaining airport operations in Mexico,

airport and reservations systems in Phoenix, and Horizon's

airport operations in Montana, Idaho (except Lewiston), and

Alberta rollover to 2000. -- 12 p.m., PST: Alaska's and Horizon's remaining Lower 48 and

Canadian operations rollover to 2000. -- 1 a.m., PST: Alaska's operations throughout the state of Alaska

rollover to 2000.

"While we don't expect to encounter any problems New Year's Eve, we realize it's prudent to keep an eye on things," Fowler said. "In the airline business, we learned long ago that you have to plan for all contingencies."

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air serve more than 75 cities in Alaska, Canada, Mexico and seven Western states. In 1999, readers of Travel & Leisure voted Alaska the "World's Best Domestic Airline," while readers of Conde Nast magazine voted Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air the best major airline and best regional airline respectively.