Flights around the world may face major disruptions this weekend after Airbus
announced on Friday that many of its popular A320 family aircraft need an
urgent software update. Some planes may also need small hardware fixes.
These changes must be completed before each affected aircraft can operate its
next flight. Industry sources say this could affect thousands of planes globally
and around 300 in India. The fix is required because strong solar radiation was
found to sometimes damage data important for flight control systems.
In India, IndiGo and Air India are the biggest users of A320 family aircraft,
which include the A320, A319 and A321 models. Both airlines said they know about
Airbus’s instructions and have started carrying out the required updates.
IndiGo has about 370 A320 family planes, Air India has 127, and Air India
Express operates 40. Most of these jets will need the software update, which
may cause short groundings since each update takes a few hours per plane.