[sxp]

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 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]

> 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.

[RealityVoid]

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.

[RealityVoid]

My take was initially similar to yours but I have just updated it considering the affected units did not in fact have EDAC on them. With ECC, I would say the odds of having such an error decrease dramatically. But without it... yeah, I can believe it.

[trebligdivad]

Where did you see that it didn't have ECC?

[bgwalter]

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.

[cyberax]

> What are the prior probabilities that the system was exposed to "intense radiation"?

I suggest trying to fly with a Geiger counter. At the cruise altitude you have something like 15-20x the normal background level, when flying over the pole it can rise to 30x.

It's actually not caused by the solar radiation, it's too weak to reach the flight level. It is caused by cosmic rays, and the solar activity modulates how much of the cosmic radiation reaches the lower levels of the atmosphere.

[NedF]

How can a ~bit flip can cause something that bad? It would mean everything else like you mention would also be that bad. Bad ram, bad hard disk, loose wire, bird hits the plane, everyone jumps at once, leaking military jamming.

Radiation should be covered under normal safety, along with they already shield for it.

People often wrongly blame things on radiation, bit flips etc. when they don't know the real cause. A well known pattern.

There is a Hacker News item that was on high repeat where they eventually they solved the ~'cosmic radiation bug' as they first called it. Cannot remember the link.

It will not be true no matter what the, I know 'interesting' facts, 'I have a wiki link', crowd tell you. Real life is boring (and amazing). See Heisenbug's - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug