Expert Says Cosmic Rays May Have Triggered JetBlue’s Mid-Air Drop

A leading space and radiation expert says “cosmic rays” — high-energy particles from a distant supernova — may have caused the mid-air incident on a JetBlue flight that left at least 15 passengers hospitalized on Oct. 30. His claim contradicts the explanation offered by Airbus, which attributes the sudden altitude loss to “intense solar radiation.”

The JetBlue Airbus A320 was flying from Mexico to New Jersey when it abruptly dropped altitude, forcing an emergency diversion to Tampa, Florida. Tampa Fire Rescue reported that “approximately 15 to 20 passengers were evaluated and transported to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.”

Weeks later, Airbus released a statement saying that solar radiation may have corrupted data essential to the aircraft’s flight-control systems. The manufacturer also instructed more than 6,000 A320-family aircraft to undergo an immediate software update, briefly grounding parts of the fleet.

However, Clive Dyer, a space and radiation expert at the University of Surrey in the U.K., told Space.com that solar activity on Oct. 30 was “insignificant” and far below levels capable of affecting aircraft systems. Instead, he suggests the aircraft may have been struck by a cosmic ray — a high-energy particle released from a distant supernova that may have traveled millions of years before reaching Earth.

“Cosmic rays can interact with modern microelectronics and change the state of a circuit,” Dyer explained. “They can cause a simple bit flip, like a 0 to 1 or 1 to 0. They can mess up information and make things go wrong. But they can cause hardware failures too, when they induce a current in an electronic device and burn it out.”

According to Space.com, cosmic rays produced by exploding stars can create showers of particles that penetrate Earth’s atmosphere. Solar flares can also produce these particles, though they are often far more energetic — and potentially more damaging — than cosmic rays.

The outlet noted that potentially hazardous solar radiation levels occurred less than two weeks after the JetBlue incident, which may explain the urgency behind Airbus’s fleet-wide update. Dyer argues this highlights the need for more robust aircraft electronics.

“It’s down to manufacturers to produce hardy electronics, especially in safety-critical units,” he said. “A slight problem is that over 20 years, they’ve become complacent, because there have not been any significant solar-weather events.”

A recent report suggests that after decades of relatively quiet solar activity, the sun is entering a much more active cycle — a shift that could impact aircraft systems more frequently in the years ahead. “You can get huge increases in particle radiation from the sun,” Dyer warned. “A thousand times higher than cosmic rays, and then many aircraft could be bothered by it.”

In rare but documented cases, such as the 2008 incident on a Qantas Airbus A330, an SEU was suspected of triggering uncommanded control-surface movements. If the related electronics are not sufficiently radiation-hardened — or lack redundancy and automatic error-correction — a cosmic-ray-induced bit-flip could disrupt flight control, sensor data, or other safety-critical subsystems. This is why modern avionics design guidelines often include protections against single-event effects (SEEs), especially for high-altitude and long-haul aircraft.

While the exact cause of the extremely rare JetBlue incident may never be fully determined, the debate between solar activity and cosmic-ray interference highlights a broader vulnerability in modern aviation: the increasing sensitivity of advanced microelectronics to high-energy particles at cruising altitude. As aircraft systems rely more heavily on compact, powerful processors, the industry faces growing pressure to harden critical avionics against radiation-induced errors. Whether triggered by the sun or by particles born from a distant supernova millions of years ago, these rare but consequential events remind us that aviation safety is shaped not only by engineering on Earth but also by forces far beyond our planet.

Sources: AirGuide Business airguide.info, bing.com, yahoo.com, Space.com