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I'm not sure this is a bug. It sounds like pilot-error to me (I am not a pilot): "In the bulletin, Boeing said that selecting full reverse too quickly upon landing before the aircraft has fully transitioned to ground mode could cause the system to activate."
There should be manual override. What if this happened in-AIR?
I hope people are beginning to understand that the presence of software in any system is a liability.
When learning to fly sailplanes, I was always grateful that the "primitive" wood, steel and canvas gliders I flew had purely mechanical linkages between the controls and the control surfaces, and only one instrument that required electricity at all (and even that was duplicated by a purely mechanical version).
Obviously automation has great advantages, but inevitably the increased complexity comes with risks which are more difficult to fully comprehend.
"Boeing said that selecting full reverse too quickly upon landing before the aircraft has fully transitioned to ground mode could cause the system to activate." That sounds like apple's "you are holding it wrong" when "antenagate" happened. Not something I want to hear from an aircraft company where people's lives depend on it working.
It doesn't at all. It's an explanation why it might happen.They never said that this behavior won't be fixed or changed. It's not blaming the pilots.
I hope people are beginning to understand that the presence of software in any system is a liability.
Sometimes software fails and sometimes it even kills people, but how many lives has it also saved because of things like collision avoidance and accurate navigation?
How many easter eggs will emerge from Boeing. In last 2 months, we had similar incidents from Boeing where an undocumented software safety kicked in and causing trouble for everyone
It's not just Boeing unfortunately. Every software driven aircraft seems to suffer from these bugs. The F35 lost radio communication after crossing the international date line the wrong direction IIRC, and the pilots had to use hand signals to land.
From what I remember, the first time 4 USAF F22 were flying across international date line to deploy to Hawaii(?), they had software related issues. As they flew across the international date line (first time in a real flight), all computers on the jets crashed, including navigation/etc.
Luckily they were flying in close formation with a tanker, signaled with flashlights, and were able to follow the tanker back to another base safely.
I believe USAF requires a multi jet (usually tanker) to accompany small jets when they are flying across the ocean.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't at all. It's an explanation why it might happen.They never said that this behavior won't be fixed or changed. It's not blaming the pilots.
There is a notion of blame wrapped up with "too quickly".
I'm not a lawyer; couldn't tell you where the fault would split in that case, but if my hunch about the lack of a failsafe for a given instruction is correct... it's still a surprise to me. I'd expect existing avionics production procedures to catch this sort of thing.
I hope people are beginning to understand that the presence of software in any system is a liability.
Indeed. And that is just an extension of the danger presented by electronic systems generally. When learning to fly sailplanes, I was always grateful that the "primitive" wood, steel and canvas gliders I flew had purely mechanical linkages between the controls and the control surfaces, and only one instrument that required electricity at all (and even that was duplicated by a purely mechanical version). Obviously aut…
Boeing’s answer seems to say if you accidentally pull the thrust reverser lever before the aircraft is on the ground it just force shuts down the engines. That sounds like an odd safety override. Surely a better solution would be to just not activate reverse thrust. Unlike car engines a jet engine can’t just be quickly restarted if it accidentally shuts down. It typically takes 30-60 seconds to get going. This and ea…