Loading…
30
Why does nobody talk about the actual failure rate of those new solid-state ADCs?
I was reading a report from the FAA's 2023 maintenance data, and it said the mean time between failures for the new solid-state air data computers is around 12,000 flight hours. I always heard they were supposed to be 'bulletproof' and last the life of the aircraft. That's a lot lower than I expected, especially compared to the older pneumatic systems they're replacing. It makes me wonder if we're trading one set of problems for another, just with fancier boxes. Has anyone else had to pull one of these units for a premature fault?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
west.faith7mo ago
Remember when they pushed those new digital fuel gauges a few years back? My buddy at a regional said they'd get random "fuel low" warnings with full tanks, grounding planes until they swapped the whole unit. Fancy tech is great until it glitches out for no reason you can see or fix. Makes you miss a simple float gauge sometimes.
4