Solar explosion scare; 6,000 flight services disrupted after Airbus A320 recall, 338 services affected in India
NEW DELHI: A software glitch discovered in Airbus's A320 passenger planes affected services worldwide. 6,000 flight services were suspended globally on Saturday morning. Other flights that completed their services were parked at airports. This computer glitch caused flights to descend suddenly.
In India, 338 flights, including those of IndiGo, Air India and Air India Express, were affected. The sudden changes in schedules put the itinerary of many passengers in disarray. Services were not cancelled. However, there has been no clarity on the rescheduling. Meanwhile, services including Etihad and Air Arabia have resumed.
About 100 Airbus A320 aircraft operate services to Kerala. Gulf services were not significantly affected. Two Umrah services from Karipur airport had to be cancelled.
Airbus said that the problems in 5,100 aircraft were resolved by Saturday night through a software update. A decision was made to revert to the old software version. However, the computers in 900 older aircraft will have to be replaced. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency recommended that the service be suspended. The planes have strong solar radiation, which is feared to even cause an explosion. This can disrupt flight control computers. The instruction said that the service be resumed only after an urgent software update.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation instructed airlines to fix the glitches in Indian aircraft by Sunday morning. The software upgrade of 270 aircraft was completed late last night. The process is progressing at bases in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.
- The flaw was discovered after a JetBlue Airlines flight unexpectedly descended sharply on October 30, injuring passengers.
- The L104 software version of the Elevator Aileron Computer (ELAC-B) hardware was affected by intense solar radiation.
- This could lead to the corruption of data required for controlling the aircraft.