What kind of codepath causes systems to die when crossing the date line? Shouldn't all times be in UTC, and certainly any change of timezone is a display-only issue? What would be the point of using local timezones for any "systems" type stuff?
My guess would be that the problem isn't time, but rather the code dealing with the position of the plane in longitude as it crosses over. Perhaps it spat out an unexpected negative, or even something undefined.
