fencitup

What causes the ACARS to stop working?
Also, if it does stop working, is shutting down the aircraft the only way to get it back?( i'll elaborate, the only approved way)

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Happy Camper

Nope there is a system reset available. Contact MX control.

T/R DISAGREE

There are many differant reasons tha the ACARS will fail and like happy said to properly reset the system you would need to call MXCTRL. While you are on the phone with them you can always ask them why the ACARS may have failed. My guess is that the ACARS computer either overheated or just flat out failed and needed a reset.

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yasir1212

There are a few different ways to reset the ACARS system on the aircraft (and no, you don't have to power down the aircraft in most cases), contact MX control and they will guide you. If you pay close attention to the failures, you'd realize that majority of the ACARS issues are normally on dual-fms equipped airplanes, where the single units hardly ever have any problems as compared to the dual units. With me personally, I've noticed that out of all the ACARS problems that I've had (ACARS fail, screen goes blank, etc), I would venture to say that about 80-90% of them have been with a dual-fms equipped airplane. Any MX gurus or other folks with great ACARS knowledge care to elaborate as to why there is a higher number of ACARS failures in dual units versus single?

kidicarus5897

I've noticed that the FMS's with the soft buttons, that if you hit them too fast sequentially, the acars fails. Freakin odd

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flyguy60067

I must say that the most memorable FMS/ACARS failure was on a single FMS airplane...it came in from Cleveland and thought that it was in 1993...

fencitup

You don't have to pay close attention to notice the majority of the failures come in the dual FMS aircraft. I long since realized that, but kept telling myself it was just coincidence

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Rags

Or you can always just turn off avionics bus 1 for a few seconds. Also good at clearing a blank screen. Note: when doing this, you'll end up having to re-do anything you have done in ACARS (read: init, w&b), as well as the perf-init.

DISCLAIMER: don't be stupid and do this in flight.

iahembmx

The acars quits most often because it been on for an extended period of time. Most often the no1 display blanks first, the cmu c/b is the reset, but mx ctrl is supposed to "authorize" it. It does take 2 minutes to power back up. With all the quick turn arounds now we get more planes staying powered up in the base and they fail....

heph224

1. Shutting the aircraft down and then powering it up.
2. Resetting the CMU breaker.
3. De selecting the Avionics Master Switch 1 for a few seconds and then selecting it on again.