CRSs Are Working To Meet Feb. 4, 1999, Deadline

<B> CRSs Are Working To Meet Feb. 4, 1999, Deadline</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty

For computer reservation systems, D-day on Year 2000 issues is less than 100 days, rather than a year, away. With travelers able to book tickets up to 365 days out, travel agencies and travelers will start booking travel for the year 2000 on Jan. 1, 1999. By Feb. 4, every CRS will allow such bookings.

Investing an estimated $149.5 million to $164.5 million in Y2K programming, the global distribution systems are confident that their mainframe computers, coded with one of the most complicated and arcane computer languages, TPF, will be ready. Their concern at this point is whether the hundreds of airlines, car rental companies and hotels to which they are connected will themselves make the deadline.

"Our food chain is very long, and we are dependent on so many different entities," said Ronnie Hauptman, director of Galileo International's Year 2000 project. "One of the major concerns is that everyone we work with is ready."

The epitome of the interdependence of computer systems today, the global distribution systems are solely dependent on the data these vendors provide. As part of its Y2K contingency plan, Sabre said late last month that it was installing "defensive code to protect the company's real-time systems from improperly formatted date data supplied by third parties."

In its most detailed report on Y2K--perhaps prompted by the Securities & Exchange Commission's latest call for more candid disclosures not only of costs, but also of risks and contingency plans--Sabre on Sept. 30 announced that its costs were now estimated at $80 to $95 million, more than triple that of its competitors. Besides the CRS, Sabre noted, its costs include fixing software in its consulting business. Worldspan put its Y2K remediation at $25 million; Amadeus estimated $23 million and Galileo set aside $21.5 million.

Sabre said its efforts have included "checking more than 200 million lines of software code, confirming proper system interfaces with more than 600 suppliers, providing new software for over 40,000 travel agencies, and testing more than 1,200 hardware and software systems. Currently, the Sabre Group has applied the equivalent of more than 700 full-time employees to the project and logged more than 1 million labor hours."

Included in Galileo's cost estimates is the building of a "Time Machine," a full simulation of the company's reservation system that it is using to test not only its own systems, but those of all its suppliers.

"Performance against key dates, such as the rollover to the new millennium and Feb. 29, 2000, are critical, and the Time Machine will help customers assess the readiness and robustness of their own systems in a risk-free environment," said Hauptman. "We built this because we needed to build an environment where we could manipulate it forward and backward to anything we needed."

Besides the rollovers in 2000 and 2001, and leap years in both 2000 and 2004, Galileo, along with virtually every technology vendor, is testing a number of dates that could cause unusual occurrences, including Sept. 9, 1999.

For most of the GDSs, Y2K planning began in 1995 or 1996, with an assessment of their software, hardware and other systems. Galileo, for example, had to replace its key-card entry system. Most of the mainframe programming was completed by mid-1998, when full-blown testing with suppliers began.

Amadeus began end-to-end testing with Air France on July 6 and printed its first Year 2000 test ticket two days later.

In the assessment stage, all four CRSs determined that at least one of their back-office accounting systems was not Y2K compliant and opted to replace, rather than rewrite, them. Apollo and Galileo thus introduced the new GlobalWare product it purchased and modified. Sabre abandoned ADS as it switched to TravelBase; Amadeus migrated Max users to its new Global Max or other systems; and Worldspan moved a few agencies still using its World Ledger 3000 to World Ledger 4000, or other systems of their choosing.

Since most of the automated booking and expense reporting solutions available in the market today were written after 1995, the date glitch doesn't exist. However, these vendors are likewise participating in all the testing, ensuring that networks, CRSs, credit card feeds and anyone else they might be reliant upon has fixed their systems.

To help ensure that subscribers are ready, the CRSs have been frantically replacing older terminals likely to have trouble. Amadeus employed teams of weekend warriors to replace old equipment and train agents on it in agency offices from summer through year-end, said Jim Davidson, president of the Miami-based North American marketing company.

Scott McMahon, Worldspan's Y2K coordinator for agencies, plans to spend New Year's Day 2000 buried in his cubicle on the 15th floor at Atlanta's Galleria, testing everything. He and a team of emergency response technicians also plan to be on hand to help any customers through a weekend crisis.

Thankfully, McMahon said, the Millennium changeover occurs over a weekend--on Friday night--giving technicians a few extra days of grace time to iron out any difficulties that might occur.