Airbus on Friday recalled thousands of planes during one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, citing potential problems aircrafts could experience during intense solar storms.
“Analysis of a recent event involving an A320 Family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls,” Airbus said in a statement.
The European-based company is ordering immediate repairs centered on making a software update to 6,000 of its widely used A320 family of jets, which includes operators such as American Airlines.
The issue takes around two hours to fix, as the solution primarily involves reverting to earlier software. For about two-thirds of the affected jets, the recall will theoretically result in a brief grounding as airlines revert to a previous software version, industry personnel told Reuters.
The emergency recall is believed to have responded to a JetBlue flight from Cancun to New Jersey that was forced to make an emergency landing in Florida on October 30, after experiencing a sudden uncommanded loss of altitude. Several passengers were taken to the hospital with injuries following the incident.
American Airlines, the world’s largest A320 operator, said some 340 of its 480 A320 passenger jets required the fix this weekend. The repairs are expectedly to be mostly completed by Saturday.
Delta Air Lines said fewer than 50 of its aircraft will be impacted and the work should be complete by Saturday morning, according to CNN.
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“As safety comes before everything else, Delta will fully comply with a directive and expects any resulting operational impact to be limited,” the airline said in a statement.
There are approximately 11,300 A320-family aircrafts in operation, with Airbus’ best-selling A320 model accounting for 6,440 of those.
