Over 6,000 Airbus A320 jets worldwide require urgent software updates

Airlines from India to Colombia, from New Zealand to the United States, spent the weekend canceling flights, grounding jets, and scrambling to keep passengers moving.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the problem is a software failure inside Airbus A320 jets that regulators said must be fixed before planes take off again.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency ordered the emergency patch late Friday, and it came with a very clear instruction: no fix, no flight.

The A320 is the most-flown commercial jet on earth, with more than 11,000 in service, and over 6,000 need this fix now. Holiday traffic is already stretched thin. And now more than half of these jets may be pulled from rotation unless airlines act fast.

This directive came just days after a JetBlue flight from Cancun to Newark dropped suddenly mid-air, without the pilots doing anything. No one got hurt, but that plane had to land in Tampa. And the flight computer was blamed.

Airlines ground planes and delay flights to apply the fix

Investigators say the issue is some “intense solar radiation” found in a system called ELAC 2 (it controls how the plane handles in the air) that mess with its data.

The ELAC system, made by Thales in France, controls key stabilizer functions and flight limits. It’s part of Airbus’s fly-by-wire technology, which relies on electronic signals instead of traditional controls.

A spokesperson for Airbus said the company is following regulator instructions and knows this will “lead to operational disruptions to passengers and customers.” Depending on how old each aircraft is, the update is either a quick software download or a full hardware replacement, which means longer ground time.

The Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S. mirrored the European alert. About 545 planes registered in the U.S. were affected. American Airlines said 209 of its aircraft needed checking, and by Friday night, fewer than 150 still hadn’t been updated.

In India, IndiGo said 200 planes required inspection, but 160 had already been cleared by Saturday afternoon. They didn’t have to cancel any flights. In Colombia, Avianca said over 70% of its fleet was affected, and they’re freezing ticket sales until December 8.

Over in Japan, ANA Holdings canceled 95 flights on Saturday, impacting around 13,200 passengers. In China, China Southern Airlines saw 452 flights delayed, that’s about 20% of its schedule. EasyJet, operating across Europe, reported 323 flights delayed as of noon in Hong Kong.

Airlines complete urgent software upgrade as regulators warn of safety risk

Airlines in Australia and New Zealand also grounded A320s to push through the fix. Jetstar, owned by Qantas, and Air New Zealand halted operations on some flights. Wizz Air, based in Hungary, has an all-Airbus fleet and said all affected A320 jets were updated overnight. Their flights resumed normally.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority warned that if airlines don’t upgrade their systems “over the days ahead,” their A320s will be grounded by Sunday.

Not every British carrier is affected. But British Airways, which flies nearly 150 A320s, is in the clear and said no passengers will notice any changes.

Both the A320neo and older A320 models are involved. Airbus confirmed the fix applies to all variants in the family. The neo version already had its own headache last year, when Pratt & Whitney engines started breaking down, forcing jets into early maintenance. Now it’s the software’s turn.

The A320 became Airbus’s breakout success after it launched in the late 1980s. The lineup includes the A319, A320, and the larger A321. A few years ago, the company added new fuel-saving engines, calling them the “new engine option.” All of them use the same core computer system to fly.

This whole situation is another reminder that aviation depends on stable software more than ever. A single corrupted code can throw off a plane’s systems.

Boeing knows this all too well. After two 737 Max crashes tied to a failed MCAS system, the company grounded fleets globally. That tragedy rewrote the rules for software checks. Now, it’s Airbus getting hit with a warning shot of its own.

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