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Comment by zanecodes | Hacker News Reader

>A permanent software fix is anticipated in the second quarter of 2017

Who wants to bet that the permanent fix will be 'automatically reboot the computers if the plane has been powered on for more than a week and stationary on the ground for more than N minutes'

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Actually, it's likely given the publicly-traded pressure toward the short-term cheapest option. Any substatial fix would be subject to passing QA/QC and validation processes given that safety-critical systems tend to use the waterfall development model. But, unfortunately, the explosion of subsystem features and over-engineered solutions leads to a factorial multiverse of subtle gotchas and inability for humans to prove nonfunctional requirement properties. Formal verification, feature hesitance ftw.

> publicly-traded pressure toward the short-term cheapest option

Boeing plays very much the long term game. It took something like several years in development and 10 years in production for the 747 to make a profit, for example. It is simply impossible to design and manufacture airliners on quarterly results.

> cheapest

Boeing is very well aware that the most expensive option for them would be to acquire a reputation for cheap, unsafe, crummy airliners.

Source: am former 757 flight controls design engineer, and happy Boeing shareholder for 35 years.

Boeing changed in 1997 when the MDC bean-counters took over. Look at their line-up for 2020: fourth iteration on the 737 with MoM shaping up to be a fifth, third iteration on the 747 if it's still alive, third iteration on the 777, 787 range split across the -9/-10 and the -8 which is basically a completely different aircraft due to the chaotic and rushed development.

"No more Moonshots" is their current self-professed philosophy:

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/mcnerney-no-more-lsquom...

And that's not even addressing their creative methods of program accounting, or the fact that their suppliers now have to wait 120 days for payment.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-suppliers-idUSKCN0Z...

None of those sound like the Boeing of old that "bet the farm" on the 747. Which, anyway, was only meant to be a short-term airframe until supersonic airliners took over...

I'm kind of surprised it requires a software fix. With the amount of maintenance checks and checklist procedures in aviation, "reboot plane every 2 weeks" doesn't sound like a big issue. What's worrysome is that the manufacturer didn't know about it and didn't put it on the checklists.

There's a bug in your permanent fix. :)

(What happens if the plane is never stationary on the ground for more than N minutes?)

Then, for reasonable N, it's not getting regular maintenance and should eventually disable the engines (while landed) as a failsafe. :)

Although, after the recent Mars lander fiasco, I wonder about the ability of our hardware to even reliably tell whether it's landed or not. >_>

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