Starting the plane's flight computer takes a long time, as in hours [1] because there are tons of automatic checks to be done. We're not talking restarting the

Starting the plane's flight computer takes a long time, as in hours [1] because there are tons of automatic checks to be done. We're not talking restarting the DVD player. Also, when planes like these are at the gate, they run off the Ground Power Unit (GPU), basically a wall power cord. Because of this, the engines and other systems can be off, but the core flight computer is still on. If they could, airlines would never restart these. Remember, it needs to do things like reset all the laser ring gyro's, inertial reference units, etc because these are voting systems, so they need to figure out what truth is. As such, the boot process is understandably complex. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/04/us-poland-dreamliner-idUSBREA130AT20140204 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/04/us-poland-dreamlin...