If anyone has an article with more technical details on what the solar radiation did, and how they’re going to patch it, I’d like to read about it :)
Airbus said it discovered the issue after an investigation into an incident in which a plane flying between the US and Mexico suddenly lost altitude in October.
The JetBlue Airways flight made an emergency landing in Florida after at least 15 people were injured.
The problem identified with A320 aircrafts relates to a piece of computing software which calculates a plane’s elevation.
Airbus discovered that, at high altitudes, its data could be corrupted by intense radiation released periodically by the Sun.
The A320 family are what is known as “fly by wire” planes. This means there is no direct mechanical link between the controls in the cockpit and the parts of the aircraft that actually govern flight, with the pilot’s actions processed by a computer.
Not sure about a specific article for planes, but some forms of solar radiation can cause random bits to flip to the opposite when it crosses through computer hardware like memory.
These randomly occur already just by us existing in the solar system, and error correction algorithms, hardware like ECC memory, and shielding helps to prevent and correct these issues when they do happen. The intense radiation recently, the same that caused the extended auroras, caused more and stronger occurrences though.
One flight we know was affected despite systems that help prevent issues like that, so they’re having the software reloaded on every plane that might have been affected.
Basically I can confirm this.
Depending on the used hardware, the hard- and software is able to detect and correct these so called “softerrors” or bit flips in the volatile memory (RAM) of a computing system. In our products we have the exact same problem and it depends on the complexity (and at the end on the price $$$) how affected the product is by this physical effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-event_upset?wprov=sfti1
In my previous work we had a bunch of devices that failed at the final installation. All of them passed that test at the end of line at the plant without any issues but they simply refused to boot at the customer site. When we read the ROM contents some data was corrupted We had a very extensive investigation and finally they realized that all the ones that failed had been flown instead of using ground shipping and there had been some solar activity so the final conclusion was bit shift due to solar storm and since fixing was to difficult and expensive it was just decided to stop shipping this particular device by air (it used a very cheap flash memory)
Here’s an article with a few more details https://avherald.com/h?article=52f1ffc3
Nice thank you, this one has the details I was curious about
In a service difficulty report submitted to the FAA the operator stated, that the Elevator Aileron Computer #2 (ELAC2) was identified faulty causing an uncommanded pitch down in cruise flight, the autopilot remained engaged
On Nov 7th 2025 the NTSB reported: “During cruise, the aircraft experienced an uncontrolled descent for approximately 4-5 seconds before the autopilot corrected the trajectory. This likely occurred during an ELAC switch change.” The occurrence caused 10 injuries on board, the NTSB opened an investigation.
The subsequent investigation identified a vulnerability with the ELAC B hardware fitted with software L104 in case of exposure to solar flares.
This identified vulnerability could lead in the worst case scenario to an uncommanded elevator movement that may result in exceeding the aircraft structural capability.
…for approximately 4-5 seconds before the autopilot corrected the trajectory.
Not trying to blame them, but where were pilots in this?
It’s fly by wire, the pilot doesn’t have direct control of the plane, which is the main issue here.
Shouldnt there be alarms when the auto pilot detected an unexpected rapid elevation change?
It’s not elevation, the height of a plane is called altitude. The change was in the elevator which is a control surface on the plane. There is so many people with so little understanding weighing in on this thread it’s hilarious
altitude: 1 a: the vertical elevation of an object above a surface (such as sea level or land) of a planet or natural satellite
elevation: 1: the height to which something is elevated: such as c: the height above the level of the sea
Looks like the same word in a slightly different package. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah tiger woods is definitely hitting that shot with his golf bat wrong. Literally how you sound
Seems like a huge gap there lol
Why is it called fly by wire? Fly by chip would make more sense. The wire is connected to a chip, not to a mechanical system.
To indicate that there isn’t a direct mechanical link between the pilot and the flaps. There’s wires and computers in between.
Disconnecting the AP when flying at altitude isn’t necessarily the best thing to do even if there is an upset. There are so many factors a play that asking what they were doing for 5 seconds is a ridiculous question.
I wonder if it was even possible for the pilots to intervene, or if the system was interpreting any signal from them as “pitch down” during that time
The pilot should be able to intervene. If the system interprets pilot input as nonsensical it overrides the pilot, but the pilot can switch to what Airbus calls “direct law” which directly maps pilot input to control surfaces without any sanity checks from the flight control system.
SUNLIGHT??? While flying through the air?? Who could have seen this coming :o
Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
There’s other radiation in solar radiation than just light. The most harmful stuff doesn’t really reach the earth’s surface, but you’re exposed to higher radiation amounts when flying, same applies to any electronics on board an aircraft. That’s why you will usually find multiple flight control computers that have to agree on their calculations.
I mean its all still just the same thing as “light” tho, its just not the kind thats visible to the human eye. Its all electromagnetic radiation in the end.
The maths and physics are the same, the impact is not. It’s about energy and how well you can shield against it. Shielding against visible light is simple, thin cardboard is probably enough, the aluminium frame of an aircraft is more than sufficient and the plastic or ceramic packaging of a microcontroller too. Shielding against gamma radiation is hard, you’ll need something like a thick layer of lead, and even then every once in a while a photon might get through.
Edit: The incident that caused this grounding was a solar flare, so not just some visible light.
Just put some sunscreen on them! \s
The different wavelengths don’t travel through the atmosphere equally though, that’s why you see red light on the horizon in the morning and evening
But you’re really clever, from your snarky comments, so I guess you already knew that
:)
What i tried to point out with my original comment is that it seems odd that the people that get payed billions to build airplanes havent considered this problem. Cosmic radiation causing bit flips is super old knowledge and one of the reasons why ECC memory exists. I dont know if thats what happened here but if it is then its an embarrassing failure.
Airbus discovered that, at high altitudes, its data could be corrupted by intense radiation released periodically by the Sun.
Its not very specific so who knows what actually happened or if they are just completely bullshitting maybe.
I would guess flares are getting more common and more powerful, and the protection was projected for less intensity without enough overhead.
Makes me wonder how big is protective capacity on the space station and satellites, but they are likely built with more security considerations than budget considerations
Im more wondering why they did not see it sooner. I mean these have been flying for awhile.
