Passenger Jet Suddenly Dropped From Sky for a Wild Reason, Airbus Says

"After taking off from Cancun, Mexico, on October 30, a packed JetBlue airliner seemed well on its way for just another uneventful flight. It had reached its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, at which point the plane practically flies itself, and passengers begin to unwind, unbuckle their seatbelts, and bother their rear neighbors by reclining too far. Its destination: Newark, New Jersey."

"The pilots regained control of the plane, an Airbus A320, but the plunge was so violent and abrupt that at least three passengers cut their heads open after smashing them on the ceiling. After making an emergency landing in Florida, 15 were taken to the hospital. The cause wasn't immediately clear. But after grounding more than 6,000 of its planes last week, Airbus finally shared the suspected culprit: cosmic rays from outer space messing up the aircraft's computer systems."

After takeoff from Cancun on October 30, a JetBlue Airbus A320 abruptly dropped from its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, causing head injuries and an emergency landing in Florida. Fifteen people were taken to the hospital. Airbus identified suspected cosmic-ray-induced single-event upsets as the culprit, prompting grounding of more than 6,000 planes. Cosmic rays are high-energy subatomic particles from supernovae and solar activity that constantly bombard Earth. When such particles strike a computer memory chip they can flip a bit from 1 to 0 or vice versa, corrupting software or hardware behavior. These bit-flips can produce sudden, dangerous anomalies in aircraft systems.

Read at Futurism