Cockpitbuilders.com

Hi All

Earlier this week I was on an evening flight from KIAH to KRIC operated by United Express (aka Mesa Airlines).  The aircraft was an Embraer 195...the largest of the Embraer series I think.

The cockpit crew was having a problem with getting the APU to operate properly.  There was also no Ground Power available since the generator unit outside also had an obvious issue and was blowing copious amounts of dark black smoke.  I was seated in the first row aisle seat and the cockpit door was open so I had an entertaining time watching what was going on in the cockpit.  After much fussing around the Captain finally announced that they were having a problem getting their systems up and running and would have to resort to completely shutting everything down to reboot to start all over again.  He announced that since given the darkness at night we would be sitting in the passenger cabin in complete darkness for a couple of minutes.  Which was the case.

After sitting in darkness for the couple of minutes the reboot worked smoothly, and all was up and running again in a few minutes. I watched as the FO worked on re-entering all the required info into the CDU which was apparently lost in the shutdown.

The thing is I thought this sort of thing (i.e., computer confusion and crashes) only happened with home flight simulators. So the next time I have to do a clean reboot of my computers I will be feeling a lot better about it knowing that it is a real life occurrence!

Fred K

Hey Fred,

That's a great post, thanks for sharing! It sure does make our simulator faiures more relatable doesn't it?

John