this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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Flights disrupted after Airbus discovers intense sun radiation could impact flight control data (www.bbc.com)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by otter@lemmy.ca to c/tech@programming.dev
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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.

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[–] bravesilvernest@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

...for approximately 4-5 seconds before the autopilot corrected the trajectory.

Not trying to blame them, but where were pilots in this?

[–] Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

It's fly by wire, the pilot doesn't have direct control of the plane, which is the main issue here.

[–] bravesilvernest@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago

Seems like a huge gap there lol

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Shouldnt there be alarms when the auto pilot detected an unexpected rapid elevation change?

[–] BillBurBaggins@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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)_/¯

[–] BillBurBaggins@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah tiger woods is definitely hitting that shot with his golf bat wrong. Literally how you sound

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

You mean the equipment that resembles a hockey stick? Continue being pedantic. It makes you look very smart.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

To indicate that there isn't a direct mechanical link between the pilot and the flaps. There's wires and computers in between.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 4 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] BillBurBaggins@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

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.