There isn’t space on the ground to park all aeroplanes

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

23 June 2019

In the late 1990s, there was a world-wide scare about the so-called Y2K-Bug. Majority of the computers and computerised systems of that era had been programmed with a tow-digit year in their calendar. Thus, a date like 1995 was only entered as 95.

Then the experts realised that there was an impending crisis once the century rolls over. Any programme that required to work out the difference between two dates on either side of the year 1999 would encounter an error.

If the computer tried to find the duration that had elapsed from, say, 1995 to 2005, it would have subtracted 05 – 95 and get negative 90 years! Not only is the magnitude of the answer wrong, but it is also a negative quantity and negative time does not exist.

The same calculation done by a computer that is able to recognise the date in full would be: 2005 – 1995 = positive 10 years.

Because of this impending problem; the whole world went into panic mode and many people started planning on how to suspend operations come the year 2000. The airline industry in some countries even considered grounding all their aircrafts.

But airline operators soon realised that over 95 per cent of all aeroplanes are in the air at any one time. If they were all ordered to land, there wouldn’t be enough airport space to park them!

Thankfully, like most global crises, the Y2K bug turned to have been greatly exaggerated and the year 2000 came and passed without any reported incident of a catastrophe. Indeed, the jury is still out on whether all the urgent and far-reaching measures taken were necessary. Many companies replaced all their computers in fear of the Y2K bug.

Nevertheless, the surprising outcome of this story is that there isn’t enough airport space in the world to park all the aeroplanes. The same can  be observed in the bus and matatu operations.

If you walk around any major urban centre in the middle of the night, you will notice that there very many matatus parked along the streets. In fact, this is one of the greatest hidden challenges of operating a large fleet PSVs: where to park them at night.

I commute between Nairobi and Thika by bus quite often and the journey takes about 50 minutes. At the terminus of one of the operators on this route, a bus leaves every 5 minute or so.

Thus, after one departure, another 10 buses will depart behind it before it reaches Thika. Therefore, at any one time, there are about 10 buses heading to Thika and another 10 on the return journey.

This makes a total of 20 buses on the highway at any one moment. At night, when there are no passengers, these buses must be parked somewhere – I don’t know where!