A normal airplane is made up of approximately 4 million parts working together flawlessly. Electrical, electronic and software components have an important place in these technological vehicles with such a complex structure. So how is the software update process performed on airplanes? Let’s take a closer look at the details of the subject.
How to update the software in state-of-the-art airplanes?
As it is known, various software updates are made to provide new functions or improvements to many technological products. Airplanes contain many devices that need software. Therefore, a software update in the same way as our phones or other technological products we use in daily life cannot be done on these huge vehicles that contain many different components.
Software updates have different contents and installation types for each aircraft and each system they host. Let’s understand the general logic of software updates on airplanes with an example update among so many processes.
FMS: Navigation database update for the flight management system
Every 28 days, aircraft maintenance engineers use floppy disks (except for some aircraft types) to update the navigation database, which contains all the necessary information (airways, airports, runways, radio navigation aids…) for the flight plan made for the FMS, whose main function is the in-flight management of the flight plan made for the flight, which is a basic electronic component in the cockpits of the aircraft, which includes a keyboard or touch screen with a small screen. So how is this process performed?
To explain this process performed by aircraft maintenance engineers step by step:
- First of all, among the various switches on the fuse panel in the cockpit of the aircraft, the ones related to the flight management computers are set to the appropriate position for the update.
- The data loading selector, which is also located in the corner of the fuse panel, is activated and the relevant flight computer is selected for the first upload.
- The diskettes with the current data are inserted into the MDDU (multipurpose disk drive unit) for transfer. In this process, one or more diskettes can be used in sequence. Then reverse the procedures of the first two steps and turn on both flight computer switches.
- The current software is now installed on one of the flight computers. After this data is transferred to the other flight computer by cross-loading, the maintenance engineer in charge of the operation ends the operation after keeping the necessary maintenance records.
With this periodic update, the aircraft’s navigation software is routinely kept up to date. With a modification made by Boeing, flash disks can be used for this process on B777 model aircraft. Different memory and devices can also be used for various aircraft types. In addition, navigation database update can be done in flight simulation as well as in real airplanes.
