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FAA Declares Emergency Order; Grounds Jets From Multiple Airlines due to Geomagnetic Storm Threat

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The FAA has ordered that Airbus 320 series aircraft must be modified to allow for safe travel during geomagnetic storm events on Earth. Aircraft not fixed cannot fly beyond tonight anywhere in the world. Image: Grok
The FAA has ordered that Airbus A310 and  A320/321 series aircraft must be modified to allow for safe travel during geomagnetic storm events on Earth. Aircraft not fixed cannot fly beyond tonight anywhere in the world. Image: Grok

The FAA has issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive (EAD) for certain Airbus 319 and A320/A321 airplanes due to potential failures of on-board control systems due to problems created by geomagnetic storms. The EAD requires replacing or modifying the software that controls the airplanes’ elevator ailerons, a critical part of the plane that controls an aircraft’s roll or banking. According to the EAD, operators must perform the work before the airplane flies again by midnight tonight. The EAD also prohibits installing the affected software on any aircraft.

The FAA’s action mirrors an EAD issued by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, which certifies the European-made Airbus airplanes. The European EAD was issued in response to a recall notice made yesterday by Airbus warning of the issue.

“Airbus has worked proactively with the aviation authorities to request immediate precautionary action from operators via an Alert Operators Transmission (AOT) in order to implement the available software and/or hardware protection, and ensure the fleet is safe to fly,” the company said.

Airbus discovered the issue after an incident that occurred on a Jet Blue flight from Cancun, Mexico to Newark, New Jersey on October 30. Jet Blue flight 1230 suddenly dropped, in which the FAA described the issue as a “flight control issue.” After the sudden drop, the aircraft made an emergency landing in Tampa Florida, where 15-20 people were taken to local hospitals with non-life threatening injuries. One injury was described by a pilot on the aircraft as a “laceration in the head.”

The order impacts about 6,000 aircraft around the world, and about 1,630 within the United States.  American Airlines is the largest operator of this aircraft type in the United States, with 132 A319s, 48 A320s, and 277 A321s. United Airlines has 81 A319s and 27 A320s.  Delta has 57 A319s in service. Jet Blue has 223 Airbus A320 and A321 aircrafts. Frontier and Allegiant also operate impacted aircraft.

Airbus identified an apparent issue relating to “intense solar radiation,” which “may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls” and recommended an emergency software update to the impacted family of aircraft.

 

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury apologized to customers in a post on LinkedIn.

“Our teams are working around the clock to support our operators and ensure these updates are deployed as swiftly as possible to get planes back in the sky and resume normal operations, with the safety assurance you expect from Airbus,” he wrote in a message posted on Saturday.”

On the night of November 11, a significant impact from a coronal mass ejection triggered a severe geomagnetic storm which lit up aurora across much of the United States. Image: NWS
On the night of November 11, a significant impact from a coronal mass ejection triggered a severe geomagnetic storm which lit up aurora across much of the United States. Image: NWS

Dr. Tamitha Skov, a Space Weather Physicist, is puzzled by the issue. On X, she wrote that on the day of the Jet Blue aircraft incident, “Space weather was completely quiet. No solar storms, no radiation storms, and no radio blackouts from solar flares either.” She added, “Was it just a chance GCR secondary or a delayed response to an earlier single event effect in the avionics?”

Dr. Skov also described how a fix could be done on X, writing, “Using radiation hardened parts is a start. That is what they will do for the 900 planes that have older avionics. As for the software fixes, they will likely be workarounds and mitigation procedures to check for corrupted data before executing commands related to the health & safety of the aircraft. We do this all the time with spacecraft so they can mitigate through all sorts of on-orbit anomalies!”

The Earth has been impacted by several strong geomagnetic storms in recent months, with a severe storm impacting Earth on November 12.

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona. They can eject billions of tons of coronal material and carry an embedded magnetic field, frozen in flux, that is stronger than the background solar wind interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) strength. CMEs travel outward from the Sun at various speeds, with some reaching the Earth as quickly as 15-18 hours and others requiring days to arrive. According to the SWPC, CMEs expand in size as they propagate away from the Sun and larger ones can reach a size comprising nearly a quarter of the space between Earth and the Sun by the time it reaches our planet. When they arrive at Earth, a geomagnetic storm can result. Fast wind streams from features called Coronal Holes can also drive geomagnetic storms.

Geomagnetic storms are rated on a 1-5 scale by the SWPC, with 1 considered minor and 5 considered extreme. Geomagnetic storms can disrupt electronics and electrical systems, interfere with spacecraft and satellite communication, and also trigger brilliant displays of the aurora in the night sky.

Airlines are reporting some disruptions to service as they take aircraft out for necessary upgrades. The FAA encourages people checking with their airline to see if and how this issue is impacting their flights this weekend.