Thousands of Airbus A320 aircraft around the world may need a software update, potentially causing flight delays or cancellations during the busy period. Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
The emergency update stems from an incident on October 30 when a JetBlue flight traveling from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey experienced an issue with flight controls. According to preliminary flight data from Flightradar24, the plane fell about 100 feet in seven seconds and was diverted to Tampa, Florida.
Between 15 and 20 people were injured and taken to area hospitals landingsaid Vivian Shedd, a spokesperson for Tampa Fire Rescue.
Airbus identified a clear issue involving “intense solar radiation,” which “can damage data critical to the functioning of flight controls,” and recommended an emergency software update for the A320 family of aircraft – a common passenger aircraft for US airlines.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency, the EU equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration, issued an emergency order on Friday to ground planes in the Airbus A320 family with a certain hardware and software combination.
The order goes into effect Saturday at 7:00 PM EST. At that point, the planes waiting for the updates would essentially be grounded. The order allows the planes to be flown without passengers up to three times to take them to a location for repairs.
Airbus sources told CBS News that 5,000 to 6,000 planes will need software updates.
The FAA is expected to issue an emergency order soon.
Several US airlines use the Airbus A320 family in their fleets. Spirit and Frontier only fly the A320 aircraft, with many popular airlines having hundreds in their fleets.
Delta flies about 315 A320 jets, United has about 200 aircraft and American has about 480 aircraft.
United told CBS News that the order affects six aircraft in its Airbus fleet. Delta expects that only a small portion of its A320 fleet, fewer than 50 aircraft, will be affected by the updates.
American Airlines said in a statement to CBS News on Friday evening that it had reduced the number of affected planes from more than 340 to 209, and expected the majority of those 209 to be updated by Friday “and through the night.”
“All aircraft will be ready before the EASA Emergency Airworthiness directive takes effect tomorrow at 6:00 PM CT,” American said in a statement.
Airlines for America, the trade association for the major US airlines, predicted that airlines will carry a record 31 million passengers from last Friday, November 21, through next Monday. The FAA says it expects Thanksgiving this year holiday travel The period is the busiest in fifteen years.
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