HKA research provides important insights into current Airbus control problems
Following an incident involving an Airbus A320 on October 30, 2025, which resulted in an unintended descent and numerous injuries, so-called single event upsets (SEUs) - bit errors caused by cosmic radiation - are the focus of international investigations. The fact that SEUs can affect safety-critical systems in aviation has also been the subject of intensive research at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HKA) for some time.
December 4, 2025
In the Aeronautical Engineering specialization of the Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics courses, potential scenarios of such malfunctions have already been investigated as part of the bachelor's thesis "Enhanced error detection and failure management for safety-critical fly-by-wire systems" by Jonas Herrmann under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Reza Ahmadi und Malte Blum. The work developed modern, network-wide methods for error detection and correction that can protect not only individual computers but also the entire avionics system. Faulty data is detected during transmission, isolated and - where possible - automatically corrected.
Due to the promising results, the thesis was presented as a scientific paper at the international AVINER UNSURYA 2025 conference and will soon be published in a specialist journal. The real-life relevance of this research is now becoming particularly clear: Airbus has confirmed the problem and published a manufacturer's information that provides for software resets and the partial replacement of affected control computers. Around 6000 A320 family aircraft worldwide need to be checked before they can continue to be operated.
With its research approaches, HKA is thus making an important contribution to the further development of safety-critical systems in aviation, underlining the importance of applied research in overcoming real challenges.
