I was on an Air Canada Embraer 190 going from Montreal to St. Johns in early summer 2006. We boarded and sat in the plane on the tarmac for 2+ hours straight, while the flight crew rebooted the whole plane 5 times. It was well after sunset, and it of course involved shutting down everything. I mean, up to total darkness. And then they turned the systems on, one by one. Before every one restart they apologised on the PA, more and more sheepishly every time.
Before the last, 5-th restart they announced that the company engineers had boarded the craft and did the restart themselves.
One of the bigger problems was that during the first shutdown, all air conditioning was turned off. And it wasn't restarted until after the last, successful attempt. About 1 hour into the ordeal it had become REALLY hot in the cabin and the cabin crew finally realised that it would be a good idea to open front and back doors to create a draft. It helped immensely.
What surprised me was that the people on the plane took it COMPLETELY calmly. Absolutely noone complained. At least not about the restarts and possible suspicions about airworthiness. I can understand why *I* was calm - it was a third leg for me that day, one of which was an intercontinental flight. I hadn't had any real sleep for about 25hrs at that point. I coulnd't care about anything.
The only thing that really annoyed me at the time was that every now and then, cabin crew walked by and announced (at least 4 times) that I shouldn't have my seat reclined, that we are going to take off any minute now and that seat must be upright during takeoff. All that during the time when it was extremely obvious that every restart takes 15+ minutes at the minimum (you can see how slowly the systems go off, one by one, and come back alive one by one) and that we are not going to fly any time soon. I understand well that during the takeoff I need to be upright. But at the time their constant nagging appeared so ridiculously pointless. I admit that I lowered it down again a number of seconds after every such conversation. And yes, I did set it upright for takeoff.
Anyway. Air Canada was a launch customer for those Embraers and had acquired their first examples only few months prior. So it didn't really surprise me. But 2hrs+ and 5 restarts was kind of pushing it.
I remember that Italy won the world cup that night (the roar for the final goal was immense in the Montreal terminal). And it was the evening flight. For anyone wishing to verify the story.
1 restart? That's nothing!