A surge in solar activity during Solar Cycle 25 has triggered aviation disruptions worldwide — from GPS errors to aircraft computer glitches — raising urgent safety and operational challenges for airlines.
As Solar Cycle 25 reached its active peak in 2024–2025 (every 11 years since 1755), the industry has seen real operational impacts — GPS degradations, HF radio blackouts, polar reroutes, inadvertent in-flight computer glitches resulting in nosedives and bumpy flights and increased horror. It was immediately followed by the Manufacturer’s advisories, AOTs, and EADs to global A320 operators.
On the 28th of November 2025, Airbus even issued an urgent operator-level action after analysing radiation-linked anomalies on A320-family systems.
There are over 6000 Airbus 320 series planes undergoing a mandatory software fix/upgrade on the globe right now. It is a mandatory callout from Airbus to all the operators, and the compliance has caused innumerable flight delays and cancellations.
Frequency
The frequency of occurrence of solar flares varies with the 11-year solar cycle. It can typically range from several per day during solar maxima to less than one every week during solar minima.
The electromagnetic radiation emitted during a solar flare propagates away from the Sun at the speed of light with intensity inversely proportional to the square of the distance from its source region.
A solar flare is a sudden, intense release of electromagnetic energy (X-rays, extreme ultraviolet) from the Sun’s atmosphere, often accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) — a massive cloud of charged particles–they are real bursts of energy from the Sun that, at their worst, can degrade navigation, jam communications, and induce random faults in aircraft electronics.
These disturbances degrade GNSS/GPS signals, disrupt high-frequency (HF) radio, and increase the flux of high-energy particles at aircraft altitudes.
Range and the impact
- Geographic range — polar and high-latitude flights are most exposed.
The Earth’s magnetic shielding is weakest at high latitudes, so flights over the Arctic/North Pole and near Antarctica see the largest increases in energetic particle flux and ionospheric disturbance. During strong events, airlines frequently reroute polar flights to lower latitudes.
High-energy particles (protons, neutrons) interacting with silicon can deposit charge in a transistor or memory cell, flipping a stored bit (a Single Event Upset, or SEU).
- Altitude sensitivity — Higher cruise altitudes = higher particle flux.
 At typical jet cruise altitudes (30,000–40,000 ft), the atmospheric shielding is much less than at ground level.
Systems at risk.
GNSS/GPS positioning — can lose lock, produce position errors or increased noise within minutes during radio bursts.
HF communications— can go black for hours during intense particle storms, affecting oceanic and polar flights.
Onboard electronics: Rare random bit ( binary status change from 0 to 1) flips can cause software glitches, spurious warnings, or require a subsystem reboot; redundancy normally protects flight-critical control, but non-critical avionics and crew displays can be affected.
Aircraft computers’ glitch
Airlines/operators/regulators: This is a real and growing operational risk during the solar maximum. The industry is responding — with monitoring, rerouting policies, technical hardening, and software fixes — but costs (fuel, delays, operations) are real and increasing.
A caveat:
As Solar Cycle 25 peaks, expect more alerts and more operational adjustments. The good news is that the pathway to resilience is clear: There is no verified case in the past two years where a modern airliner crashed solely due to a solar flare or CME. Better monitoring, smarter operations, and continued hardening of avionics and software will keep air travel safe — even when the Sun gets loud.
