China's civil aviation has resolved the Y2K problem as it relates to flight safety, Chen Haiju, director of the Air Control Administrative Bureau under the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), announced in Beijing on November 19.

Chen made the remark after a drill targeted at the Y2K millennium bug, jointly conducted by the CAAC and its counterpart in the Republic of Korea (ROK), succeeded on the morning of November 19.

The drill began at 10 p.m. (Beijing Time) Thursday night and ended this morning, during which a Chinese plane flew from Beijing to Seoul, and a ROK aircraft flew from Seoul to Beijing.

The drill tested navigational and telecommunications systems, airport energy supplies, and airborne equipment.

Kim Tschang-sun, director general of the Civil Aviation Bureau of the ROK, who arrived in Beijing on the ROK aircraft, said, " This exercise proves that all our systems concerning flight safety, both on board and on the ground, will be unaffected by the Y2K problem. And I believe that there will be no problem whatsoever at the turn of century. The joint drill, which was also the first in the world, was quite successful."

The CAAC also conducted a successful domestic drill last month in Shenyang, the capital city of northeast China's Liaoning Province.