Power Cycling

Do your really think, that power cycling your computer is just something people do at home, when their computer acts weird? Well … not really. In a Safety Alert for Operators issued by the FAAyou will find the following two paragraph:

To alert all operators of MD-11 aircraft equipped with the Honeywell Pegasus FMC, with Future Air Navigation System (FANS) enabled, of possible erroneous Air Traffic Control (ATC) messages displayed in the CPDLC log.

and

On March 11, 2010, Boeing issued Multi Operator Message (MOM) SR1-1536638744. The MOM provides maintenance with procedures to clear the Honeywell FMC ATC Input Buffer by depowering the aircraft or resetting the appropriate circuit breakers before each FANS/CPDLC flight.

There is an issue with the expiration of incoming messages of the air traffic control in the flight management computer. They do not expire after the flight has completeted. So a pilot could take them for current ones and not the ones of the last flight. The current work-around: Power cycling the aircraft or at least the flight management computer ;)