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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[–] 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.