The issue is thought to affect 6,000 planes, which will need to undergo an urgent software update or have computers replaced.

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.

      • BillBurBaggins@lemmy.world
        11·
        3 days ago

        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·
          3 days ago

          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)_/¯

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
      11·
      3 days ago

      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·
        3 days ago

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