In Sully's passenger plane on the Hudson River the engines were gone but batteries still powered control surfaces

In a passenger plane unlike a small plane, electrical motors assist all control surfaces because of the distance from the cockpit to the control surfaces on Wings and tail. But, in an EMP all motors and Cpus and hard drives and anything electrical would fry to where the engines, control surfaces, lights on the plane everything went down at once. So there would be no emergency landings, not autopilots, no lights on the plane, no nothing electrical working if a plane was hit by a Electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon or large enough Solar flare. So, all passenger planes hit by this would simply fall out of the sky killing everyone.

There are some exceptions to this: Air Force One and most military planes are wired differently so they don't short out as much as passenger planes. So, unless the same military grade technology is built into all passenger planes too which is much more expensive to do, just expect one day a large enough solar flare or a nuclear blast up to 200 miles high in the sky to make all passenger planes fall out of the sky at once.

This is not an IF this is only a When by the way. (The Solar Flare part of this). This would likely hit only one side of the planet unless the flare was a long enough event to fry the whole planet in a 24 hours period which I think is pretty unlikely. But, the last event this strong was the 1859 Carrington Event.

1. Solar storm of 1859 - Wikipedia

   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

   The Solar storm of 1859—known as the Carrington Event—was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ...

2. What If the Biggest Solar Storm on Record Happened Today?

   news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares...

   Mar 4, 2011 ... If this solar cycle produces a flare like the 1859 Carrington Event, we may face trillions in damages and year-long blackouts, experts say.

3. A Perfect Solar Superstorm: The 1859 Carrington Event - History...

   www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-the-1859-car...

   Mar 14, 2012 ... The solar storm that hit Earth last Thursday delivered only a glancing blow, but in 1859 the planet wasn't so lucky.