Solar flares potentially destroying human civilization seems like a premise ripped from science fiction. However, there’s a grain of truth in how fragile our tiny blue marble is as it hurtles around the Sun. Airbus recalled around 6,000 planes in its A320 fleet on Friday after it discovered that ” intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.” As of Monday, fewer than 100 planes remain unpatched or unserviced. The glitch came to light when pilots suddenly lost control of an A320 in October.
JetBlue Flight 1230 was flying from Cancún, Mexico to Newark, New Jersey when one of the Airbus’ computers malfunctioned. The aircraft dropped 100 feet in just seven seconds. The conditions in the passenger cabin created by the abrupt nose-dive were as chaotic as you could imagine. According to Simple Flying, an airline service cart struck the ceiling. Once the flight crew regained control, they immediately diverted to Tampa International Airport in Florida. At least 15 people were transported to nearby hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.
Space radiation can corrupt computer data
How a solar flare could fry electronics is relatively straightforward. According to the BBC, high-speed subatomic particles bombard computer systems and can cause a single-event upset, colloquially called a bit flip. It’s an instance where a computer’s memory is corrupted, flipping a 0 to a 1 or vice versa in the bits of stored data. It might sound like a simple software fix, but it wasn’t a universal solution for every impacted Airbus A320. There were 900 cases where hardware had to be replaced to better shield electronic components from solar radiation.
Airlines rushed to repair their Airbus A320 fleets over the weekend to avoid any disruption during the hectic Thanksgiving travel season. American Airlines announced the same day as the recall that all 209 affected planes in its fleet had been fixed, according to CNBC. The European aviation behemoth is out of the woods quite yet. The manufacturer confirmed to Reuters on Monday that it discovered a quality issue on the metal fuselage panels of several dozen undelivered A320s. The Airbus A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the best-selling plane of all time earlier this year. Hopefully, it doesn’t become as problem-plagued as its American competitor.
