Hilton wrote:
Hi,

I was flying (on American) from LAX to SJC today on an EMR 140 RJ.
We get pushed back. After about 5 minutes, the captain says: "We
need to reboot the computer. The emergency lights will come on for
about a minute. This happens all the time. It's perfectly normal."
He rebooted, fired up the engines, and off we went.

I had no idea that a pre-taxi step was "Computer: REBOOT".

Hilton

Many airliners use FMS (Flight Management System) and no movement is allowed
while the system is "initializing". They might not have noticed that
wasn't complete before starting their pushback. It would be necessary to
"reboot". Perhaps his "stable table" for IRS use is an AHARS unit. On that
type system there are no switches to "reboot" it if it has a problem. You
have to remove normal aircraft electrical power and bring the power back on
line one side at a time within a specific time period. This starts a new
"initialization" of the gyro system. On the MD80 aircraft the captain could
have used the Ground Service power system to keep the cabin lighted with
normal power while he turned the generators off and then back on. Either
the EMR 140 RJ doesn't have that capability or the captain forgot.

--

Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler History: http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
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