Global airlines moved swiftly over the weekend to restore operations after a sudden software alert from Airbus forced urgent checks across the world’s A320 fleet, grounding hundreds of flights and raising concerns ahead of peak holiday travel. Most major carriers now say their aircraft are back online after reverting to an earlier software version, with regulators indicating that widespread disruption is unlikely.
A partial recall issued late Friday warned that high levels of solar radiation could corrupt flight-control data on certain A320-family jets, prompting airlines to suspend flights while applying mandatory fixes. Airbus has said more than 6,000 aircraft — over half the global A320 fleet — were potentially exposed.
Airlines worked overnight after regulators signalled that affected aircraft must not operate until the correction was applied. United Airlines, Air India, Delta Air Lines and Wizz Air reported that they had completed or nearly completed the resets, with little to no impact on schedules.
Within 24 hours of the alert, major operators such as American Airlines, IndiGo and easyJet had already restored most of their fleets by reverting to an earlier, stable software version.
American Airlines said only four of its 209 affected aircraft remained to be serviced. United and Delta separately confirmed that the issue had not disrupted their operations. IndiGo completed the mandated Airbus upgrade across all 200 A320-family aircraft, while Air India said more than 90 percent of its fleet had been reset.
Flyadeal said the late-evening nature of the recall prevented more severe disruption, noting that the airline had fixed all 13 affected jets overnight.
Wizz Air, which operates around 250 Airbus aircraft, finished the upgrade across its entire A320 fleet by Saturday morning, allowing normal services to resume.
Airbus warned on Friday that intense solar radiation could corrupt important flight-control data on certain A320 aircraft. The interim solution requires airlines to revert to an earlier software version, a process that typically takes two to three hours per jet.
However, up to 1,000 older aircraft will require a hardware update and were grounded while undergoing the longer fix.
The warning followed an incident on 30 October, when a JetBlue A320 flying from Cancun to Newark experienced an unexpected altitude drop, injuring 10 passengers. France’s BEA is investigating the event.