Airbus racing to fix software glitch affecting thousands A320-family jets
European multinational aerospace company Airbus is “working around the clock” to fix a software glitch on thousands of its Airbus A320-family jets worldwide.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury apologized for the disruption on Saturday and said that the fix had been causing "significant logistical challenges and delays.”
"Our teams are working around the clock to support our operators and ensure these updates are deployed as swiftly as possible to get planes back in the sky and resume normal operations," he said, according to Business Insider.
On Friday, it was announced that Airbus has requested immediate precautionary action from operators to implement the available software and/or hardware protection. The company said that it realizes that the move will lead to operational disruptions.
Regulators around the world have also directed their carriers to perform an update before resuming flights, with the recall issued to over 350 operators globally.
The decision followed an October incident involving an A320-family aircraft, which suddenly lost altitude when flying from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey. It made an emergency landing in Florida with at least 15 injured people.
The incident prompted significant safety concerns and led to an investigation. According to Airbus, the investigation revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.
“Airbus has consequently identified a significant number of A320 Family aircraft currently in-service which may be impacted,” the company said.
The list of the impacted aircraft also includes the A318, A319, and A321 models, according to the BBC.
The fix is reportedly simple and only takes a few hours, but some disruption has been noted. India's aviation regulator said that 338 Airbus A320-family aircraft in India were affected and the fix is expected to be in place by Sunday. One of the country’s airlines, Air India, posted on X that there isn’t a major impact on the schedule, but added that some of its flights may be slightly delayed or rescheduled.
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Wizz Air confirmed to the BBC that it had completed the update overnight, and that all flights are expected to resume on Sunday as normal. In turn, Easyjet initially warned there could be changes to its flying schedule, but later announced that it had already completed the software update on many aircraft, planning the schedule to be normal on Sunday.
American Airlines expected "some operational delays" as 209 of its planes were affected, but added that most of its updates would be completed on Friday or Saturday. Delta Airlines didn’t expect any major issues, saying that the impact on its operations would be "limited". Minimizing the disruption on the Sunday after Thanksgiving is especially important, as it tends to be one of the busiest periods of the year.
