Concerns of prolonged travel disruption across Europe and beyond eased on Saturday after Airbus swiftly rolled out a critical software upgrade to around 6,000 A320 aircraft, following warnings that planes could not fly until the fix was applied.
The urgent directive came late Friday after a JetBlue flight incident in October revealed that intense solar radiation could corrupt flight control data. The announcement initially raised fears of mass groundings and days of cancellations worldwide.
However, several major European airlines reported minimal or no cancellations, though disruptions appeared more significant in Latin America and Asia.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury admitted the fix had caused “significant logistical challenges and delays” but stressed that operators were working around the clock to restore services. “I want to sincerely apologize to our airline customers and passengers who are impacted now. But we consider that nothing is more important than safety,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said Airbus had already corrected the defect on more than 5,000 aircraft by Friday night. He added that the number of planes requiring extended servicing was far fewer than feared: “We had evoked the possibility of a thousand aircraft. It seems that we are now only talking about a hundred.”
The rapid intervention has eased fears of widespread travel chaos, though the incident has highlighted vulnerabilities in aviation systems exposed to extreme solar activity.
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