Free Republic

Airlines around the world canceled and delayed flights heading into the weekend to fix software on a widely used commercial aircraft after an analysis found the computer code may have contributed to a sudden drop in the altitude of a JetBlue plane last month.Airbus said Friday that an examination of the JetBlue incident revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls on the A320 family of aircraft. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency issued a directive requiring operators of the A320 to address the issue and said it may cause “short-term disruption” to...

Airbus, one of the biggest aircraft makers globally, has issued a major warning that the company said could likely ground many passenger jets worldwide. The aeronautics company announced Friday that they have discovered a potential vulnerability in the software on board the Airbus A320 during solar storms, which may hinder pilots from steering or stabilizing the plane while in the air. Airbus issued an Alert Operators Transmission (AOT), a global warning that urges all airlines using the A320 passenger jet to immediately update their software and hardware to better protect against radiation interference. Industry safety experts believe the problem originated...

In little over a week, Russia lost its second fighter jet, Su-30, to an uncanny crash when it was carrying out a massive aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities and battling in the Kherson region. On October 23, an apartment building in Irkutsk, Siberia, was struck by a Russian Sukhoi Su-30SM Flanker multi-role fighter, killing both crew members and starting a massive fire on the ground. Su-30 is a two-seat, twin-engine, highly agile fighter aircraft produced by Sukhoi Aviation Corporation of Russia. The Su-30s are manufactured at the neighboring Irkutsk Aviation Plant, where the jet is reported to have just taken...

Too many computers and not enough “hands-on” flying mean most pilots would have fallen victim to the weather that brought down AirAsia 8501. As searchers close in on what appears to be the main wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501 the retrieval of the airplane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders should soon follow. The wreckage lies no more than around 100 feet down in the Java Sea. Although there are strong currents and poor visibility, compounded by the high seas generated by stormy weather, divers should be able to locate the rear end of the fuselage where the flight data...