Airlines around the world cancelled and delayed flights heading into the weekend after Airbus announced on Friday that it had ordered immediate repairs to 6,000 of its A320 family of jets in a recall affecting more than half of the global fleet.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the main certifying authority for A320 aircraft, issued the instruction on Friday night as a precautionary action, saying that “safety is paramount”.
The US Federal Aviation Administration also issued an emergency airworthiness directive for certain Airbus planes, requiring the aircraft to replace or modify specific software.
The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple, but must be carried out before the planes can fly again, according to the bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters.
Of the 6,000 jets affected, a sub-set will need a time-consuming hardware change rather than a quick software fix, though the number that require more extensive fixes was smaller than the initial estimates of 1,000, Airbus said.
The setback appears to be among the largest Airbus recalls in its 55-year history and comes weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered model. At the time Airbus issued its bulletin to the plane’s more than 350 operators, about 3,000 A320-family jets were in the air.
The recall came over the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, but Delta said it expected the issue to affect fewer than 50 of its A321neo aircraft. United said six planes in its fleet were affected and it expected minor disruptions to a few flights. Hawaiian Airlines said it was unaffected.
The world’s largest A320 operator, American Airlines, said 209 of its 480 A320 aircraft would need the fix. It said it mostly expected these to be completed by Saturday, with about two hours required for each plane.
In Australia, Jetstar cancelled 90 flights, with 34 of 85 of the company’s A320/1 aircraft identified as having the problem, leaving thousands of Australians stranded at airports around the country. Affected customers documented long queues at airports on social media.
ANA Holdings, Japan’s biggest airline, said it had cancelled 65 flights on Saturday after the recall forced it to ground some aircraft. The carrier, along with affiliates such as Peach Aviation, is the biggest operator in Japan of single-aisle Airbus aircraft, including the A320.
All Nippon Airways, which operates more than 30 planes, cancelled 65 domestic flights for Saturday. Additional cancellations on Sunday were possible, it said.
Other airlines said they would take planes briefly out of service to do the repairs, including Germany’s Lufthansa, India’s IndiGo and UK-based easyJet. Kuwait’s Jazeera Airways and Air Arabia also said their planes were affected.
The Colombian flag carrier Avianca said the recall affected more than 70% of its fleet, prompting it to close ticket sales for travel dates until 8 December and warn of “significant disruptions over the next 10 days”.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation in India has told airlines not to fly A320s until modifications are carried out under the EASA directive. Air India said some of its flights might be delayed or rescheduled.
The Guardian understands that only three of BA’s short-haul aircraft are affected and it does not expect any operational impact while they are undergoing the software updates.
EasyJet had said it was expecting some disruption on Friday evening but later confirmed it was planning to operate as normal on Saturday because it had already completed the software update on many required aircraft.
A spokesperson for Gatwick airport said a small number of its airlines were affected, while Heathrow said it was not affected as of late Friday night.
Airbus said in a statement on Friday that a recent incident involving an A320-family aircraft had revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.
Industry sources said the incident that triggered the unexpected repair action involved a JetBlue flight from Cancún, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, on 30 October, in which several passengers were hurt after a sudden drop in altitude.
JetBlue had no immediate comment.
At least 15 JetBlue passengers were injured and taken to the hospital after the October incident, and the plane was diverted to Tampa, Florida.
The bulletin seen by Reuters traced the problem to a flight system called the elevator and aileron computer (ELAC), which sends commands from the pilot’s side-stick to elevators at the rear. These in turn control the aircraft’s pitch or nose angle.
The manufacturer, France’s Thales, said in response to a Reuters query that the computer complies with Airbus specifications and the functionality in question is supported by software that is not under Thales’s responsibility.
The recall comes a time of intense demands on airline repair shops, already plagued by shortages of maintenance capacity and the grounding of hundreds of Airbus jets as a result of long waiting times for separate engine repairs or inspections.
The UK’s transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said: “The good news is it seems the impact on UK airlines seems limited, with a smaller number of aircraft requiring more complex software and hardware changes.”
There are about 11,300 A320-family aircraft in operation worldwide, including 6,440 of the core A320 model, which first flew in 1987.
With Reuters and Associated Press
