Indonesian flights empty over Y2K fears

Indonesian flights empty over Y2K fears

JAKARTA (JP): Lack of promotion about Indonesia's readiness to
face the Y2K bug has caused a drop in the number of tourist
arrivals to the holiday resort island of Bali during the New Year
holiday period, a local official claimed.

The head of the Ministry of Tourism, Art and Culture's office
in Bali, Luther Barrung, said in Denpasar on Saturday that some
flights had to be canceled due to the low of number of
passengers.

"The fall in arrivals can be seen in the small number of
European tourists," said Luther.

He pointed out that there were only a small amount of
passengers boarding Garuda Indonesia flights from Europe, forcing
the national flag carrier to cancel its flights during the New
Year holiday.

He noted that out of 200 Japanese tourists, there were only 70
confirmed passengers.

Luther said that reports of Indonesia's unreadiness to face
the supposed Y2K bug had turned many tourists away.

The Y2K bug refers to a programming glitch in computers
whereby when their clocks turned to '00' at midnight on Friday
last, many systems may not have recognized the date as 2000, but
rather as 1900, resulting in problems ranging from billing errors
to power outages. However, as has been the case since the roll
over date, there have been few problems reported.

"This is all due to a lack of promotion from various national
institutions, causing tourists to think that Indonesia really
isn't prepared to face the impact of the Y2K bug," he said as
quoted by Antara.

The head of Garuda's office in Denpasar, Mohammad Azhar, also
remarked that the airline had to cancel its Denpasar-Perth and
Denpasar-London routes for the New Year because there was simply
no demand.

"Most of the tourists from abroad, particularly those from
Europe, were worried about the Y2K bug and chose to cancel their
departures," he explained. (mds)