On Friday local time, European Airbus announced that it would immediately make software changes to a large number of its best-selling A320 series passenger aircraft. Industry sources said the adjustment involves about 6,000 passenger aircraft, accounting for more than half of the total number of passenger aircraft in operation worldwide.
Airbus said in a statement that a recent incident involving an A320 family airliner showed that strong solar radiation could destroy data critical to the operation of flight control systems.
Airbus said: "The company is aware that these recommendations will cause disruption to the operations of passengers and customers." The company also revealed that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency will issue an emergency airworthiness directive.
Industry sources pointed out that in about two-thirds of the affected passenger planes, the recall only requires the airlines to restore the software to the previous version, and the grounding time of the passenger planes is relatively short.
But the scale of the operation is expected to cause significant disruption - and the incident comes just ahead of one of the busiest travel weekends of the year in the United States. In addition, hundreds of passenger planes may need hardware replacement, which will keep them grounded for weeks.
Industry sources said the incident that triggered the large-scale maintenance operation was related to a JetBlue flight from Cancun, Mexico to Newark, New Jersey, the United States, on October 30. Flight 1230 eventually made an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida due to a flight control system failure and an uncommanded sudden dive. Several people were subsequently sent to the hospital.
According to data provided by Airbus, there are currently about 11,300 A320 series passenger aircraft in operation around the world, of which the number of core A320 models is 6,440.