Comment by goblin89
6 years ago
I’d be more alarmed about the fact that FAA had to issue a directive to deal with this situation. Either Boeing did not include the reboot in operation or maintenance procedures, or operators did not follow those procedures.
The requirement of a reboot on its own, though, would not strike me as a blatant disregard for safety, as long as the period between reboots is long enough to exceed the maximum possible length of flight (taking any emergencies into account) with leeway to spare.
I wonder how many days before you hit 51 is the cutoff where planes need to be grounded - obviously a continuous 51 day flight can't happen without a lot of fancy stuff going on that doesn't apply to the 787, but let's say you're at 49.2 days and considering a .6 day flight, is that allowed or is .2 days within the expected probable variance of your flight time? What if it's closer?
I believe a reboot in such circumstances belongs to the A check[0], i.e. each 25 days of flight time or more frequently than that.
(Franky, I am surprised airplane software runs for days—somehow I assumed they get shut down completely every time they refuel.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks#A_...