Europe’s Airbus said Friday it was ordering an immediate software change to a “significant number” of its best-selling A320 family of planes, a move that industry sources said would cause disruption to half the global fleet, or thousands of planes.
Air Canada released a statement on its website saying: “Air Canada has conducted a thorough review of our A319, A320 and A321 fleets. We can confirm that there is no impact to our operations at this time.”
But Air Canada warned that some of its airline partners could be affected and encouraged travelers to check their airline’s website directly.
Airbus said the software upgrade must be completed before the next routine flight, according to a separate bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters, threatening cancellations or delays during one of the busiest travel weekends of the year in the United States and beyond.
Airbus said in a statement that a recent incident involving an A320 family aircraft revealed that intense solar radiation could corrupt data critical to the operation of flight controls.
“Airbus recognizes that these recommendations will cause operational disruption for passengers and customers,” it said.
Industry sources said the incident that triggered the unexpected repair action involved a JetBlue flight from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, on Oct. 30, in which several passengers were injured following a severe loss of altitude.
Flight 1230 made an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, after a flight control problem and a sudden, uncontrolled drop in altitude, which triggered an FAA investigation.
JetBlue and the FAA had no immediate comment.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency is expected to issue an emergency directive making this solution mandatory, Airbus said.
For about two-thirds of affected planes, the recall will result in a relatively brief grounding, with airlines reverting to a previous version of the software, industry sources said.
It nevertheless comes at a time when airline repair shops are under intense demands, already plagued by a lack of maintenance capacity and the grounding of hundreds of Airbus aircraft due to long wait times for repairs or inspections of separate engines.
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Hundreds of affected planes may also have to change hardware, threatening a much longer wait, the sources said.
Some 3,000 A320 family planes were flying around the world shortly after Airbus’ announcement.
American Airlines and Hungarian company Wizz Air said they had already identified which of their planes would need the software patch. United Airlines said it was not affected.
American, in a statement, said about 340 of its 480 A320s required software replacement and expects the majority of those fixes to be “completed today and tomorrow,” with about two hours needed for each aircraft.
There are approximately 11,300 A320 family aircraft in service, including 6,440 of the base model A320, which first flew in 1987.
The setback appears to be among the largest mass recalls affecting Airbus in its 55-year history and comes weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most delivered model.
The A320 was the first consumer airliner to introduce fly-by-wire computer controls.
The bulletin seen by Reuters blamed the problem on a flight system called ELAC (Elevator and Aileron Computer), which sends commands from the pilot’s side stick to elevators at the rear. These in turn control the pitch or nose angle of the aircraft.
The computer’s maker, France’s Thales, said in response to a Reuters question that the computer met Airbus specifications and that the functionality in question was supported by software that was not Thales’ responsibility.
