I’m not excited about flying in an aircraft whose flight control software was rush updated by the manufacturer after issues they say were caused by solar flares. Then you’ve got the vendor Thales saying things like, “[The hardware is] fully compliant with the technical specifications issued by Airbus” and that the software is not their problem. The blame game does not instill confidence.

Here’s the thing… Solar flares don’t compile bugs into software. They disrupt electric fields in hardware memory devices. Maybe you can create redundant data and checksum the crap out of it but if your hardware is susceptible to intense solar radiation maybe refactoring with a few extra memory checks shouldn’t be your response.

Admittedly, this is layman’s conjecture. But this layman is going to be 30,000ft over water in the next few days and I’d like to have a more definitive answer than, “Solar flares goofed us so we’re pushing updates.”