British Airways has cancelled around half its flights for the night of December 31 as passengers steer clear of millennium travel, the company said Monday.
The British airline will operate just 32 long-haul flights on New Year`s Eve, a BA spokeswoman said. Last year it flew 69. The fall-off in passengers comes despite BA`s assurances that it is free from the so-called millennium bug, the computer problem which threatens to disrupt systems when older computers fail to read the "00" of 2000.
The company put the fall in demand down to the fact that "the majority of passengers want to arrive at their destinations in plenty of time to celebrate the New Year. "There is no indication that there is any fear at all of the millennium bug," the spokeswoman said. She also said no flights had been cancelled for technical reasons.
For the Christmas and New Year holiday period, from December 15 to January 9, bookings were actually up 29 percent on the previous year, BA said.
Of its 32 flights, 20 will be in the air at the stroke of midnight on December 31, including flights from London to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Harare, Nairobi and New York. BA said it had been given a clean bill of health by the official British organisation set up to look into possible millennium bug problems.
From E-data
Share
