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Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

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Re: Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

#11

Post by bgwalter »

belter wrote: post #3

Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2025-0268-E: https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/2025-0268-E https://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/EASA_AD_2025_0268_E.pdf/EAD_2... 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...

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":

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

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

Re: Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

#12

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

sxp wrote: post #9

The title sounds like speculative clickbait. From https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-11-ai... : 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 ex…

> 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.

Re: Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

#14

Post by belter »

mertd wrote: post #7
JohannMac wrote: post #2

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

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

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...

Re: Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

#15

Post by RealityVoid »

mertd wrote: post #7
JohannMac wrote: post #2

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

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

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.

Re: Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

#16

Post by bgwalter »

sxp wrote: post #9

The title sounds like speculative clickbait. From https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-11-ai... : 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 ex…

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.

Re: Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

#17

Post by RealityVoid »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #12
sxp wrote: post #9

The title sounds like speculative clickbait. From https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-11-ai... : 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 ex…

> 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.

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.

Re: Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

#18

Post by belter »

RealityVoid wrote: post #17
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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

Re: Airbus A320 Fly by wire corrupted by radiation in flight

#19

Post by RealityVoid »

belter wrote: post #14
mertd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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...

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.

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