Qantas pilot Kevin Sullivan slams Airbus: is “solar radiation” just a convenient excuse?
Captain Kevin Sullivan, who commanded Qantas flight QF72 when an Airbus A330 violently pitched down twice in October 2008—injuring more than 100 people—is now openly questioning Airbus’s explanation for a strikingly similar incident on a JetBlue A320.
In the recent case, a JetBlue flight in the U.S. on October 30 experienced an uncommanded pitch-down linked to a malfunction in the elevator and aileron computer. The official explanation? “Solar radiation.” The event was serious enough to trigger the grounding of around 6,000 A320-family jets for a software fix.
Sullivan isn’t convinced.
> “I am sceptical. Is the cause of ‘solar radiation’ a smoke screen for a bigger issue? It is up to Airbus to answer that,” he said.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued an emergency airworthiness directive targeting aircraft that had received a specific software upgrade, from L103+ to L104. The directive warned that, if left uncorrected, the fault could cause an uncommanded elevator movement and potentially push the aircraft beyond its structural limits.
For Sullivan, the parallels with QF72 are hard to ignore—same manufacturer, fly-by-wire controls, sudden nose-down events driven by faulty computer logic. One key difference: after QF72, the A330 fleet was not grounded.
He argues these incidents expose the dark side of ultra-automated cockpits: planes that are “easier to fly but harder to save.”
According to Sullivan:
When automation misbehaves, pilots can be dumped into a “no man’s land” of abnormal behavior they were never trained to handle.
Increasing automation can bring unforeseen side effects, because complex systems “fail in complex ways.”
So while passengers see a smoother, more digital flight experience, the real question is unsettling: are we still in control of these aircraft—or are we trusting software we only think we understand?
Airbus is known for more automated planes, which are preferred by pilots. On the other hand, Boeing still gives room to pilots to steer the plane as mechanical drive is more in the American producer’s planes.
