The geomagnetic storm of May 2024 put the tracking of numerous European airline flights at risk. This was made known by research published in the SpaceWeather magazine.
The geomagnetic storm of May 2024, one of the most violent in recent decades, put air flights over Europe at risk as it caused errors in their tracking, making it impossible to know their real position. This is indicated by research published in the journal SpaceWeather by Erik Schmölter and Jens Berderman, of the Institute for Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the German Aerospace Center in Neustrelitz.
The researchers analyzed over 700 million Ads-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) messages, i.e. relating to the current system used by aircraft to transmit their position to other aircraft automatically, based on satellite navigation systems, and all data relating to speed, altitude and identity. The messages studied came from over 18 thousand aircraft and their analysis indicates that during that storm there was a marked increase in gaps in the data, with real position jumps for some aircraft, which suddenly appeared hundreds of kilometers away from their real position.
Lasting several days, the May 2024 geomagnetic storm was caused by two major jets of matter hurled from the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and by several solar flares. All together they reached the upper area of the Earth’s atmosphere (ionosphere), generating disturbances that had a major impact on communication and navigation satellites. The research published in SpaceWeather, its authors note, confirms that geomagnetic storms put air traffic at risk, in line with what is indicated by at least four other research published in 2025.
