Airbus has issued a recall affecting around 6,000 jets from its A320 family, which compromises roughly half of the world’s operational A320 fleet.
What is happening?
This recall stems from a software issue in a critical flight-control system (the “Elevator and Aileron Computer”). Investigations suggest that intense solar radiation can corrupt data in this system, potentially affecting control of the plane’s pitch and other flight-control surfaces. The problem was first highlighted after an incident on October 30th with JetBlue where the aircraft reportedly experienced a sudden drop in altitude, prompting an emergency landing. This eventually triggered a safety review that unfolded the subsequent chain of events.
Next steps
Airbus is working closely with aviation authorities and airlines. Airlines operating A320-family jets must install an immediate “fix”. For most, this just involves simply reverting to an earlier, safe software version. However, there are still hundreds of planes that requiere hardware changes, which indicates grounding for considerable amount of weeks.
Impact
The result of this event encompasses difficulties for multiple airlines. Major players like Lufthansa, American Airlines, easyJet, among others, will need to pull a portion of their A320-family fleet out of service temporarily to apply the fixes. As a result, there are likely to be flight delays, cancellation or rescheduling, especially over busy travel periods. This is impactful since the A320-family is widely used short and medium haul aircraft worldwide. Having half the global fleet of these planes affected represents a major logistical and safety operation concern. It puts into evidence how even mature, widely used aircraft can be vulnerable to external factors like solar radiation.