Up to 6,000 Airbus planes will be grounded in order to be updated due to an issue relating to solar radiation
When JetBlue Flight 1230 suddenly lost altitude during its journey from Cancun, Mexico, to New Jersey in the US last month, passengers described a terrifying experience.
There was no turbulence beforehand, the seatbelt signs had not been turned on, the flight had been going smoothly when the plane started to drop out of the sky without warning.
“People literally flew into the air,” one passenger wrote in an account shared on Reddit.
“A drink cart even hit a young child – it was terrifying, people screaming, thinking we were going down.”
Fortunately, the pilot retained control of the aircraft and made an emergency diversion to Tampa Bay, Florida, where medics treated between 15 and 20 people for injuries.
JetBlue initially said the Airbus A320 experienced a “flight control issue” but a full investigation would follow.
That review has led to Airbus, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers, to order an urgent software update for all A320s which will ground around 6,000 planes.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued the instruction on Friday night as a “precautionary action” while UK Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, said the impact on UK airlines should remain “limited”.
Solar chaos would cost £1bn a day to UK economy
It has been confirmed that solar radiation interfered with the aircraft’s control system while it was cruising at high altitude.
Extreme “space weather” is a phenomenon that is still being understood by scientists – but experts in the field are warning it poses an increasing level of risk.
The i Paper revealed earlier this year how the UK is leading a £700m mission into deep space to monitor solar weather.
The European Space Agency’s Vigil satellite will be the world’s first asset to permanently monitor the Sun from a unique vantage point and deliver early warnings of incoming solar storms.
The Vigil satellite will monitor the Sun from a unique vantage point in deep space (Image: European Space Agency)
Flares and eruptions from the Sun deliver powerful bursts of energy that can create a major disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field, knocking out critical space infrastructure.
Insurance firm Lloyds recently estimated that an extreme solar event could lead to worldwide chaos with grounded flights, silent phones, and frozen financial networks, wiping as much as $2.4trn (£1.7trn) from global GDP over five years.
The UK Government estimates losing just its own space assets would cost £1bn a day to the economy.
The hope is that Vigil will be able to give countries an early-warning system so they can take action to prevent the kind of frightening incident on the JetBlue flight.
Russia and China could take advantage of storms
The impact of solar storms – which scientists believe are set to become more frequent and intense in the coming decades – could be even more far-reaching, however.
They can also jam the GPS and radar systems used in defence systems.
It is feared that if countries such as Russia and China have advance knowledge of when solar storms are about to hit the Earth’s atmosphere they could take advantage and launch an attack while Western powers are effectively defenceless.
Solar storms can travel towards Earth at speeds of up to 3,000kph, leaving authorities as little as 12 hours to prepare.
A senior space industry source said that currently it is believed no military power has the capability to accurately predict when solar events could disrupt defence systems.
However, it is believed solar flares may have played a role in the sinking of a Russian warship during the conflict with Ukraine in 2022 by leaving its radar unable to track incoming missiles.
Nations including the US, China and Russia are now in a race to have a better understanding of solar storms and how they could give them a military advantage, the source said.