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New Delhi: The global aviation industry is currently suffering after European aerospace giant Airbus mandated the removal of thousands of its A320 family aircrafts from around the world to remedy a software vulnerability.
According to Airbus, intense solar radiation could corrupt data critical to flight controls in a significant number of A320 aircrafts. There are over 11,000 A320 family aircrafts in operation globally which include the A319, A320, and A321. Reportedly over half of these might be affected by the solar radiation issue.
The move marks the biggest recall in Airbus’s history and while the aviation giant rectifies the issue, it is causing a significant problem to the global aviation industry.
The move taken by Airbus is likely to affect 6,000 of its A320 family jets. As mandated, the rectification process has to start before the plane's next routine flight and this has threatened cancellations or delays around the world. Airbus said in a statement that a recent incident involving an A320-family aircraft was what pointed to the defect relating solar radiation to data corruption.
“Airbus has consequently identified a significant number of A320 Family aircraft currently in service which may be impacted,” the company said. “Airbus acknowledges these recommendations will lead to operational disruptions to passengers and customers,” it further added.
The manufacturer of the software, France’s Thales said in response to a query from news publication Reuters, that their software complies with Airbus specifications. The functionality in question is supported by software that is not under Thales’s responsibility, the company said.
Launched in 1984, the A320 was the first mainstream plane to introduce fly-by-wire computer controls, competing mainly with the Boeing 737 MAX. The world’s largest A320 operator, American, in a statement said about 340 of its 480 A320 aircraft require the software replacement. While this is causing problems, the airline hopes to fix these soon. Other airlines, including Germany’s Lufthansa, India’s IndiGo, and the United Kingdom-based easyJet, also said that they would be temporarily taking their planes out of service for repair.
Similarly, Colombian carrier Avianca also claimed that the Airbus recall affected more than 70 per cent of its fleet. Japan’s ANA on the other hand said it had to cancel 65 flights due to the recall. In India, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation also ordered airlines to halt all Airbus A320 flights. They said that the airline’s engineers were working “around-the-clock” to complete the software update and “hardware realignment” so that there would be no “major impact on schedule integrity across our network”.
