Airlines around the world have been forced to ground thousands of Airbus planes following the discovery of a software problem which may have contributed to a sudden drop in the altitude of a plane last month, injuring 15 people.
Around 6,000 A320 planes are thought to be affected, delaying and cancelling flights over the weekend. Airbus said on Friday that an examination of the JetBlue incident revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls on the A320 family of aircraft. The issue was caused by a software update to the aircraft’s onboard computers, the EU agency said.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the US Federal Aviation Administration have called on airlines to fix the issue with a new “quick” software update on most planes, which may cause “short-term disruption” to flights, according to the EU safety agency.
The UK's aviation regulator said there would be “some disruption and cancellations to flights”, while around 500 US-registered aircraft will be impacted, just as travellers begin returning home from the Thanksgiving holiday, the busiest travel period in the country.
American Airlines operates around 480 A320-family aircraft, 209 of which are affected. The airline said the fix should take about two hours per aircraft, with the vast majority expected to have been updated on Friday and a small number on Saturday. Some delays were anticipated, but the airline said it aimed to limit cancellations and stressed that safety remained its top priority.
EasyJet warned passengers of possible delays. In a message, it said: “A software change is underway on our A320 family and if there are any changes to our flying schedule we will inform you.”
Air India said on X that its engineers were working on the update and had already completed the reset on more than 40% of the aircraft requiring it. It reported no cancellations.
The flight control computer is a Thales computer, in operation since March 2001. It has accumulated 50 million flight hours per year on 10,000 A320s.
The functionality in question is supported by software that is not under Thales' responsibility. The faulty software is known as the Elevator and Aileron Computer (ELAC).
Following the 30 October incident on a flight from Cancún, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, at least 15 JetBlue passengers were injured and taken to hospital. The aircraft diverted to Tampa, Florida.
Airbus is one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers, alongside Boeing.