SA: Qantas boss will not board a plane on New Year s Eve

AAP General News (Australia)
04-08-1999
SA: Qantas boss will not board a plane on New Year s Eve

ADELAIDE, April 8 AAP - Qantas chief executive officer James Strong today ruled out himself
or other key Qantas executives boarding one of his company's planes next New Year's Eve.

Mr Strong also rejected reports that the British Airways board required its management team
to be in the air at midnight at the start of 2000 to demonstrate its certainty that the
millennium bug would not cause its planes to crash.

"I will be at our headquarters stone cold sober watching what happens and ready to take
quick actions," Mr Strong told a national meeting of accountants in Adelaide.

"The last place I'd want a key executive to be is in the air, I think that would be the
same with most businesses, we will have all our key people there making decisions."

Mr Strong said he was certain Qantas itself had no Y2K compliance concerns but he could not
vouch for international airports and air traffic controllers.

"Our business, like just about every other one, will need on New Year's Eve as much
preparation as possible, but then to have key people together ready to make decisions
according to circumstances around the world," he said.

"We'll have to see how air traffic systems are operating, how airports are operating, we
will have plans and then we'll make adjustments to those as necessary.

"It's very similar to how we would normally look at conditions for our operations, it's
just that this will be a very intense period of it."

Mr Strong said he did not expect much disruption to the normal flight schedule but Qantas
would cancel flights if there were any doubts about safety.

"I think everybody knows Qantas as being a conservative company which makes very precise
evaluations and we will always err on the side of caution in terms of where we operate on New
Year's Eve," he said.

Mr Strong said the story of British Airways requiring its management to board a flight on
New Year's Eve was incorrect.

"This is a great furphy, it is a press invention, that the board of British Airways
requires all their management to be on board a flight," he said.

"The board didn't meet on the day mentioned in the article, there were people mentioned who
weren't on the board and there was no such decision taken."

AAP scl/bm

KEYWORD: Y2K QANTAS

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