Northern lights and flying

[mandm]

Soo there’s supposed to be northern lights tonight / this weekend, and I saw something that said power grid failures and satellite tracking issues. Does that mean don’t consider flying near them?

 

[rwellner98]

Satellites are vulnerable because they are not shielded by the atmosphere. The grid is vulnerable because electrical wires sort of act as antennas, gathering energy along their entire path and focusing it on wherever they terminate.

Your plane will be fine. But in a worst case, GPS might be down and radios will not work, or only work over much shorter distances.

Both of those are unlikely, but not impossible. These were pretty strong ejections.

What more likely is that you'd find them distracting and overfly your destination because you're so busy looking at the light show.

 

[Zeldman]

Does that mean don’t consider flying near them?

Never had a problem with the Aurora when I was flying in Alaska.

 

[Maxnr]

I used to enjoy the lights when I was in Maine. I saw zero effects on Avionics. This was pre-GPS era. My friends in that area don't have any problems.

 

[Hang 4]

Aurora itself doesn’t cause any problems. The solar flares that generate aurora can. Some GPS approaches can be downgraded to LNAV. There’s a map online somewhere that shows areas likely to be affected.

 

[kaiser]

I’m flying tonight. Might dial in some VORs just in case. I’ll let ya know how it goes!