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50 injuries on a commercial flight is very unusual. The story is about half description of the incident and half background info on Boeing's ongoing woes. It do

50 injuries on a commercial flight is very unusual. The story is about half description of the incident and half background info on Boeing's ongoing woes. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect an engineering explainer on a breaking news story. There are experts somewhere that can put events like this into context, but they're not cited and the story isn't written around that kind of analysis, so we're left to supply it ourselves. Human nature suggests that the blanks we'll fill in will be a disaster movie, because that's "fun" to think about. That seems kinda patronizing, considering there's a first hand report describing the effect of the sudden drop: “That’s when I opened my eyes and there was various individuals at the top of the plane. Just stuck to the roof and then they fell to the floor. And then I just realized I’m not in a movie, this is actually for real,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett. Are readers supposed to just ignore this, or the pilot's comment that the plane apparently rebooted and he lost all control of it?

paulmd 3y ago
787 is known to have computer bugs that are tied to system uptime too. https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycle_51_days_stale_data/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_... Like obviously that is not the failure mode in this scenario… but it’s the same aircraft type. It’s totally believable imo that they just bumped into some other bug/timeout/overflow, especially on the 787 of all aircraft. In fairness these types of reports can also “prime” people to favor certain explanations. It doesn’t mean it is a software bug, or related in any way to the previous ones. But as a software engineer… yeah that really does sound like some kind of overflow or hang, followed by a lockup, followed by a watchdog timeout and reboot. Good thing it’s not booting off spinning rust there. “Please wait while windows checks your file system for errors” is not what I’d want to see as I’m falling out of the sky :V It obviously has to be something very edgy otherwise it would have been caught already. Uptime is a good theory imo. But that’s pure unfounded speculation. On the other hand, not good news for Boeing given the other situation. Yes, it’s unrelated and a totally different aircraft type, and small bugs are routine in newer types. But people don’t have confidence in Boeing to engineer and manufacture well anymore - when people know deep down in their heart of hearts it’s another big Boeing bug you have a mindshare problem. It’s like smeltdown etc. Even if it affects everyone it certainly reminds them of intel the most.

paulmd 3y ago

787 is known to have computer bugs that are tied to system uptime too. https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycle_51_days_stale_data/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_... Like obviously that is not the failure mode in this scenario… but it’s the same aircraft type. It’s totally believable imo that they just bumped into some other bug/timeout/overflow, especially on the 787 of all aircraft. In fairness these types of reports can also “prime” people to favor certain explanations. It doesn’t mean it is a software bug, or related in any way to the previous ones. But as a software engineer… yeah that really does sound like some kind of overflow or hang, followed by a lockup, followed by a watchdog timeout and reboot. Good thing it’s not booting off spinning rust there. “Please wait while windows checks your file system for errors” is not what I’d want to see as I’m falling out of the sky :V It obviously has to be something very edgy otherwise it would have been caught already. Uptime is a good theory imo. But that’s pure unfounded speculation. On the other hand, not good news for Boeing given the other situation. Yes, it’s unrelated and a totally different aircraft type, and small bugs are routine in newer types. But people don’t have confidence in Boeing to engineer and manufacture well anymore - when people know deep down in their heart of hearts it’s another big Boeing bug you have a mindshare problem. It’s like smeltdown etc. Even if it affects everyone it certainly reminds them of intel the most.