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Old 14th Dec 2014, 07:59
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wasthatit
 
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It looks to me like the training in unusual circumstances and emergencies (TRUCE) paid off and this major outage was handled calmly, smoothly and professionally .

Quote:
That should never happen. And (hopefully) the bits that fly the planes are built to a higher standard.
They are actually built to the same standard but it's a standard that allows different degrees of rigour depending upon the criticality of the component being produced.
This is an interesting point. Although the software standards for avionics and air traffic control have the same origin there are some subtle but important differences.

The most significant in my mind is the prolific use of so called Commercial off the Shelf - COTS - software that includes things like general purpose operating systems (Windows, Linux etc.) and device drivers. We can also refer to much of this as Software of an Unknown Pedigree (SOUP).

Historically not much COTS/SOUP is used in aircraft avionic systems but is widely used in air traffic control systems. This is because a COTS/SOUP license is usually less than 10% the cost of a special OS licence and ATC systems are generally thought to be less critical.

I don't think we have got to a point where we really understand the risks posed by SOUP. The analysis is done blindfolded so its a bit like playing the lottery (or if I want to be dramatic Russian roulette). The worry is that more SOUP is finding its way into aircraft systems and AFAIK the analysis techniques are the same as for the ground ones.

Last edited by wasthatit; 5th Feb 2015 at 22:38.
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