Paris (AFP) – Fears of days of travel chaos across Europe and the world eased on Saturday after plane manufacturer Airbus intervened rapidly to implement a software upgrade it had said was immediately needed on some 6,000 of its A320 planes. The announcement by Europe’s top plane manufacturer late Friday that the planes could not fly again until the switch was made followed an incident in the United States and raised concerns that hundreds of planes would need to be grounded for long periods.
But several leading European airlines said there had been minimal or no cancellations as a result, although there were indications the situation was more problematic in Latin America and Asia. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury acknowledged that the fix “has been causing significant logistical challenges and delays” but added its operators were working around the clock to ensure the required updates “are deployed as swiftly as possible to get planes back in the sky.” “I want to sincerely apologise to our airline customers and passengers who are impacted now. But we consider that nothing is more important than safety,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Airbus had instructed its clients Friday to take “immediate precautionary action” after a technical malfunction on board a JetBlue flight in October exposed that intense solar radiation could corrupt data critical to the flight controls.
French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot told BFMTV television that the aircraft manufacturer had been able to correct the defect “on more than 5,000 aircraft” on Friday and during the night from Friday to Saturday. He indicated that the number of aircraft requiring more prolonged servicing could be much lower than the 1,000 originally feared. “According to the latest information I have…it would seem that there would be far fewer A320s that would be impacted in a more prolonged way by the software change.” “We had evoked the possibility of a thousand aircraft. It seems that we are now only talking about a hundred,” he added.
Produced since 1988, the A320 is the world’s best-selling aeroplane. Airbus sold 12,257 of the aircraft by the end of September compared with the sale of 12,254 Boeing 737s. Air France told AFP it would be able to “transport all of its customers” on Saturday with the exception of flights on its Caribbean regional network. Air France had cancelled 35 flights on Friday. German airline Lufthansa added for its stable of carriers that “most of the software updates were completed overnight and on Saturday morning,” with no flight cancellations expected but isolated delays not excluded. Budget airline giant EasyJet indicated that it had not cancelled any flights, as the work on all its A320s was complete.
French Economy Minister Roland Lescure also told BFMTV that “for the vast majority of these aircraft,” the software update “can be done remotely, it is quite fast.” On October 30, a JetBlue-operated A320 aircraft encountered an in-flight control issue due to a computer malfunction. The plane suddenly nosedived as it travelled between Cancun in Mexico and Newark in the United States, and pilots had to land in Tampa, Florida. US media quoted local firefighters saying that some passengers were injured. JetBlue, a budget carrier, said Saturday it was doing everything to minimise disruption to passengers.
Despite the Thanksgiving holidays, the impact in the US was limited with American airlines still favouring homegrown Boeings over Airbus. United Airlines said Saturday’s flights were proceeding as normal, while American Airlines said only four aircraft had been grounded. In India, the aviation ministry said on Saturday that 68 aircraft still required updating, representing 20 percent of the country’s fleet affected by the problem. Colombian airline Avianca said 70 percent of its fleet had been impacted and warned of “significant disruptions in the next 10 days,” suspending ticket sales until December 8. In the Philippines, local carriers Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific were offering refunds or rebooked tickets after grounding at least 40 domestic flights on Saturday.
© 2024 AFP
