Originally Posted by
Check Airman
Appreciate the explanation. Am I to assume that there's some sort of clock somewhere on the plane that was only designed to count up to 2^32, and so will need to be reset before it gets to that value, so it doesn't run out of fingers to count on?
Exactly.
Of course the reset happens automatically every time the aircraft is powered down. It sounds like it never occurred to Boeing or the FAA that you could have a scenario where an aircraft was continuously powered-up for 51 days or more, and I'm struggling too to imagine that actually happening.