Airbus A320 incident: Experts raise questions about solar flare theory

After an A320 aircraft unexpectedly lost altitude and 15 passengers were injured in October, Airbus linked the incident to damage suffered by flight software due to "intense solar radiation". However, experts have raised questions about the company’s analysis.

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Following the sudden altitude drop incident during a Mexico-US flight on October 30, Airbus ordered immediate repairs to its 6,000 A320 planes.

What Airbus said

“Analysis of a recent event involving an A320 Family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls,” Airbus said on November 28.

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Later, it said that necessary modifications were carried out. “Out of a total number of around 6,000 aircraft potentially impacted, the vast majority have now received the necessary modifications.”

Experts said intense cosmic radiation can cause "single-event upsets", which can corrupt data, but added that they found no significant solar event of concern on October 30.

'No lack of a major space weather event'

Dibyendu Nandi, a space weather expert at the Centre of Excellence in Space Sciences India (CESSI) and Professor at the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata, indicated in a post on X that there was no lack of a major space weather event that day.

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"It is certainly not yet clear what transpired to lead to the fleet recall and updates. Assuming all other possibilities have been ruled out by Airbus aircraft carefully, I would lean towards cumulative space weather impacts, or a very rare energetic particle enhancement from galactic sources, manifesting during that specific October 30, 2025, Mexico-US flight," Nandi told news agency PTI.

"An analysis of space weather data shows no significant solar event of concern on October 30, 2025," he said.

Previous "impacts" may have somehow escaped scrutiny from routine ground checks, Nandi added.

Solar storms periodically occur as the Sun's internal dynamo process, which creates its magnetic field, intensifies and weakens. A cycle of solar activity typically lasts 11 years. The Sun is now said to be at the peak of its heightened phase of solar activity in the current ongoing 'solar cycle 25'.

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During a solar storm, a huge amount of charged particles, energy and magnetic fields can be suddenly discharged into the Solar System.

Asa Stahl, a US-based astronomer and science communicator, explained that when high-energy particles from the Sun strike aircraft computer chips, they can temporarily corrupt data, cause system malfunctions, or even permanently damage electronics.

Intensity of solar radiation

Prasad Subramanian, faculty at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, told the news agency: "Intensity of solar radiation during a solar flare, which is part of a solar storm, is high, which can cause 'single event upsets'. In other words, a '1' can be flipped to a '0' or a '0' can be flipped to a '1'." Binary digits '0' and '1' are fundamental to computers and electronics, with '1' typically representing 'true/ON' and '0' representing 'false/OFF'. Any change to '0' and '1' instructions in devices central to keeping planes in flight can be catastrophic.

"Now, a piece of software is relying on the hardware to interpret its commands. You're making a software, believing that it'll work, believing that the electronic chip is going to obey and interpret a '0' as a '0' and a '1' as a '1'," he said.

"But here you have an energetic particle hitting the semiconductor device, causing an anomaly, or an abnormality. So in effect, it flips the bits and so the software doesn't do what it's intended to do," he added.

(With agency inputs)