Additional flight delays and magnetospheric–ionospheric disturbances during solar storms

Although the sun is really far away from us, some solar activities could still influence the performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems on Earth. Those time-varying conditions in space caused by the sun are also called solar storm or space weather. It is known that aviation activities can be affected during solar storms, but the exact effects of space weather on aviation are still unclear. Especially how the flight delays, the top topic concerned by most people, will be affected by space weather has never been thoroughly researched. By analyzing huge amount of flight data (~ 4 × 10⁶ records), for the first time, we quantitatively investigate the flight delays during space weather events. It is found that compared to the quiet periods, the average arrival delay time and 30-min delay rate during space weather events are significantly increased by 81.34% and 21.45% respectively. The evident negative correlation between the yearly flight regularity rate and the yearly mean total sunspot number during 22 years also confirms such correlation. Further studies show that the flight delay time and delay rate will monotonically increase with the geomagnetic field fluctuations and ionospheric disturbances. These results indicate that the interferences in communication and navigation during space weather events may be the most probable reason accounting for the increased flight delays. The above analyses expand the traditional field of space weather research and could also provide us with brand new views for improving the flight delay predications.