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Comment by avelis | Hacker News Reader

In the software world I call this an end user discovered issue. But when the issue involves a plane that is carrying actual souls. That can feel very scary.

I am sure this has been resolved by now since its from 2020.

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I don't think airplane software ships updates the way npm packages do. I would be more surprised if this is fixed.

> I don't think airplane software ships updates the way npm packages do.

I'd ideally like to sleep tonight, thanks.

I think from the point of view of Boeing, the FAA and the airlines, "put it in our maintenance checklist to reboot every 51 days" is a fix.

With that framing, this sounds like one of the easiest maintenance tasks imaginable. No wrenches or grease involved.

They do get software updates. Watch "Stig Aviation" "Stig Shift" series on youtube. He's shown how to do updates in a few of his videos.

Scary would be right.

Reminds me of the F-22 Raptor crossing the International Dateline error in 2007. They were flying a squadron of them from Hawaii to Japan. They crossed the IDL and all nav/fuel systems went down, as well as some communications gear.

They only made it back because they were flying with tankers at time, who led them back to base.

Was that a coordinate thing, a timezone thing, or something else?

I'm assuming the former.

That depends on how much code was having trouble, and what you mean by "resolved".

The safe option might be to avoid the situation, and I could imagine that even if there is a code update it might just make the plane balk at getting ready to take off after a certain amount of uptime.

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