Air India crash points to systemic problems at Boeing that CEO Ortberg must fix | Hacker News Reader

Air India crash points to systemic problems at Boeing that CEO Ortberg must fix

leehamnews.com

23 pointsandrewfromx20 comments

This reads like speculation with regurgitated old news and insinuations.

I was going to say, this is just a list of accidents and ADs with no actual analysis or even an attempt to explain specifically what the through-line is. I'm no Boeing fan, and there may very well be systemic issues that need to be addressed, but this article hasn't succeeded in identifying them.

Earlier this year, a youtuber speculated on the cause of a (small aircraft) crash and was threatened with a lawsuit by the family of the pilot- he had to issue a full retraction.

Given how early the investigation is and the magnitude of this crash, I wonder how open the author is to being sued by Boeing? How is this any different than the youtuber lawsuit? Any lawyers want to weigh in?

I read it more as a timeline of Boeing failures and the type of reputation Boeing now (rightfully) has. There is little speculation about what actually happened to the Air India 787.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VswFVpyg5ew

Another pilot agrees: this was software

"Boeing 787 to lose all AC electrical power due to generator control units simultaneously entering failsafe mode."

The aircraft computer uptime was 248 days. It needed to be rebooted. Yes, it that's stupid of a software bug.

A 2016 Airworthiness Directive requires "repetitive cycling of the airplane's electrical power system."

a Model 787 airplane that has been powered continuously for 248 days can lose all alternating current (AC) electrical power due to the generator control units (GCUs) simultaneously going into failsafe mode. This condition is caused by a software counter internal to the GCUs that will overflow after 248 days of continuous power. We are issuing this AD to prevent loss of all AC electrical power, which could result in loss of control of the airplane.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/05/01/2015-10...

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/03/23/2020-06...

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-29...

Ahh so Boeing subscribes to our sacred philosophy in dealing with memory leaks. Scheduled restarts.

Or maybe something more extreme...

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180228-00/?p=98...

Every computer I have used needs restarts. Genuinely curious if there is a way to make things not need reboots, and if so, why doesn’t Apple implement it

Every consumer computer. Human-rated aerospace hardware and software are held to much, much different standards. Apple doesn't build to these standards because it's expensive to do so, and so far consumers have been willing to tolerate a little frustration in exchange for having devices they can afford and that can do new things without requiring a five-year development program.

Apple can afford to do billion dollar experiments with sapphire phones and cars, are we talking $100B to make software that doesn’t need to restart?

I think a better way to read this philosophy is trust in Allah but tie up your camel to be sure. We must rely on well written software but even software with no bugs would have to rely on hardware with no bugs and everything from power blips to cosmic rays. Systems meant for human safety should be able to detect and recover from errors without intervention in a timeframe that prevents dangerous issues from occurring.

So, Air India didn't comply with a mandatory maintenance order issued 9 years ago?

No kidding. Other aircraft probably wouldn’t function if their electricals were left turned on indefinitely. And I’m questioning how much maintenance is being done if it’s not powered down for maintenance.

Most maintenance doesn't require a full shutdown. C-checks are done every 2 years or so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks

Counting on humans to reboot an airplane because of a software issue instead of fixing the software bug is wild. An electric car that would crash and burn if the drivers forgot to fiddle with some settings in the touch screen once every month would have to be recalled.

more like why was not there a solution to a problem that existed for 9yrs? Uptime shoikd never be a problem in a controlled system..

Loss of electrical power shouldn't cause the engines to fail. They have their own backup electrical power.

So this very serious (obviously very fatal) bug is a decade old and has never been fixed ? That's incredible. Boeing is incredible.

It turns out 248.5 days is ~2^31 hundredths of a second.

Was this the uptime of the Air India plane? Or it's just speculation?

That plane had recently had major service done. The computer was likely shut off for that service.

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