FilterHN

From https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-11-ai...:

sxp

1 hour ago

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The title sounds like speculative clickbait.

  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.

This is different from the core claim that the incident was caused by radiation. What are the prior probabilities that the system was exposed to "intense radiation"? Vs some other mundane cause such as a faulty wire or mechanical issues? And what is the evidence supporting the former hypothesis?

kevin_thibedeau

1 hour ago

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> What are the prior probabilities

100% for electronics operating at altitude. Also on the ground, but we mostly act like it doesn't happen and are usually ignorant of the root cause when it does.

1 hour ago

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100% of what? Those things have ECC and redundancy to the hilt. The data corruption odds are real and higher than one would expect but still not very high.

56 minutes ago

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Look at pag 138...and correlation with altitude...: https://www.atsb.gov.au/sites/default/files/media/3532398/ao...

48 minutes ago

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Yes, look at page 135 as well. They don't know, they have educated guesses. It could be SW, it could be hw.

EMI causing bugs is the equivalent of "bad juju".

bgwalter

1 hour ago

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The airworthiness directive replaces ELAC B L104 with ELAC B L103+, without giving a reason. Unless L103+ happens to have better shielding, it looks like another issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-event_upset

userbinator

1 hour ago

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Apparently it has happened to an Airbus once before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

1 hour ago

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https://www.atsb.gov.au/sites/default/files/media/3532398/ao...

JohannMac

1 hour ago

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Caused uncommanded pitch down, could exceed structural integrity of aircraft. There are redundant units - unknown why this can happen given redundancy.

mertd

1 hour ago

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Also not very clear how they attributed the failure to solar radiation.

1 hour ago

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In my humble opinion, whenever someone dropped the idea... "Maybe it's solar radiation" it never was solar radiation. There was a subtle bug in the system or something. It's just such a cop-out to attribute it to, solar radiation, it's our profession's variant of magic.

1 hour ago

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These have specific error/data spike patterns. This document as of page 133 as good example of such investigation and conclusions: https://www.atsb.gov.au/sites/default/files/media/3532398/ao...

53 minutes ago

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It's an interesting document, but I am unconvinced that data spikes mean environmental radiation driven data corruption. The fact that they have a certain pattern suggests it's not random.

They certainly do put a chapter with potential triggers down there, and it's a good take, you can't just discard the possibility. But above, they also have SW bugs as a potential trigger, so... Essentially, they don't know for sure yet.

F7F7F7

1 hour ago

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Presumably the same affected units are part of the redundancy package. The article essentially says as much.

https://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/EASA_AD_2025_0268_E.pdf/EAD_2...

1 hour ago

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Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2025-0268-E: https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/2025-0268-E

This was the incident that triggered the investigation:

https://avherald.com/h?article=52f1ffc3&opt=0

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/30/us/jetblue-flight-emergen...

List of Airbus A320 family operators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320_family_ope...

https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/digital-transformation/...

bgwalter

1 hour ago

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According to the airworthiness directive:

  Affected ELAC: Elevator aileron computer (ELAC) ELAC B L104

  Serviceable ELAC: ELAC B L103+

So it's a regression that affects decades old aircraft. Of course Airbus is now also meddling with "AI":

Obviously there no direct connection here, but it seems that destabilizing perfectly working aircraft could be the product of a culture shift.

lysace

1 hour ago

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So the patch will be physical, I imagine.

("Apply this very expensive special tape from (e.g.) 3M here and here.")

t0mas88

2 minutes ago

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I've read the EASA emergency airworthiness directive, it's only a software change.

SteveNuts

51 minutes ago

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I believe most A320s can do OTA software updates (including dowgrades)