Trying to land on some runways causes the Boeing 737's control screens to go black

The Boeing 737 Next Generation has a gnarly bug: on instrument approach to seven specific runways, the six cockpit display units used to guide the pilots to their landing go suddenly black and they remain black until the pilots choose a different runway to land on.

The FAA has ordered Boeing to fix its software.

The seven affected runways are: Pine Bluffs, WY; Wayne County, OH; Chippewa County, MI; Cavern City, NM; Barrow, AK; La Mina, La Guajira, Colombia; and Cheddi Jagan, Georgetown, Guyana.

Yesterday, a 737-800 crashed on a flight from Iran to Ukraine, killing 167 passengers and nine crew members.

Boeing's 737 Max has been plagued by software errors that have led to the aircraft being grounded around the world. A whistleblower claims that the Boeing 787s are also unsafe due to negligence and fraud by the company.

The FAA received reports earlier this year of three incidents of display electronic unit (DEU) software errors on Model 737 NG airplanes flying into runway PABR in Barrow, Alaska. All six display units (DUs) blanked with a selected instrument approach to a runway with a 270-degree true heading, and all six DUs stayed blank until a different runway was selected. The Integrated Standby Flight Display (ISFD) and Heads-Up-Display (HUD) remained operational during this failure of the primary flight displays. The investigation has traced the behavior to a combination of common display system (CDS) block point (BP) 15 software in the DEUs and U12 or later software in the flight management computer (FMC).