By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 3, 1998; Page A10

ATLANTIC CITY – Earlier this year congressional officials warned that the Federal Aviation Administration's Year 2000 repairs were so far behind schedule and so mismanaged that many airline flights would be delayed or canceled at the turn of the millennium.

"At its current pace, [the agency] will not make it in time," Joel C. Willemssen, the General Accounting Office's information systems director, told a House subcommittee in February.

Today, however, the FAA appears to be on track for an on-time arrival. The agency said Friday that it had fixed the code on 67 percent of its "mission critical" systems. By the end of September FAA officials promise they will have completed the necessary fixes on all their computer systems, including the noncritical ones.

How did the FAA, known for delays and cost overruns with computer projects, play catch-up? Agency officials said much of the answer lies with one man: Ray Long, a former air traffic controller who quickly rose through the ranks to become head of systems development and maintenance projects at the FAA's technical center here.

Referred to as the FAA's "Year 2000 czar," the kinetic Long set up a "war room" in the agency's Washington headquarters. He reports directly to Administrator Jane F. Garvey and has decreed that the agency's entire repair process will be managed from his Washington office. He has the power to reassign any of the FAA's 48,000 employees to his project. "I have only one task every day, and it's the Year 2000," Long said.

He said his approach is without parallel in the agency's history. "But we've got a deadline that we can't push back," Long said. "We've never had that before."

It has helped Long's cause that repair work on two major systems has been easier than expected. One, called the Host, tracks aircraft between airports, and it was feared to have major problems in the basic system code on its computer mainframes. That concern, however, has proved unfounded. Another key system, ARTS 3A, tracks aircraft at the nation's 60 largest airports. Technicians concluded that it needed only minor work on four personal computers at each location.

At the same time the agency faces a challenge in implementing the necessary, if minor, fixes in thousands of separate airports and control centers. "It's going to require a lot of manpower," said Brian A. Riehle, who directs Year 2000 repair work on air traffic systems.

Despite the improvements, FAA officials are reluctant to guarantee a trouble-free 2000; they also worry about the readiness of their foreign counterparts, many of whom are just starting their fixes.

But Long and Garvey said they are so confident they are planning to be on a plane on New Year's Eve 1999, flying from New York to California. They haven't bought the tickets yet, although not for lack of trying. "The airline reservations systems haven't been fixed yet," Long said.