Airbus A320s Mostly Back in Service After Software Glitch Forces Grounding

Airbus on Monday said that most of its A320 aircraft flying worldwide are now back in service, days after the jets had to be grounded because of a software issue.

The issues began on Friday, Nov. 28, when Airbus announced that it had discovered that “intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls” on its A320 aircraft. The problem required an immediate software fix that forced airlines to ground the jets in the middle of the year’s busiest travel week.

“Airbus acknowledges these recommendations will lead to operational disruptions to passengers and customers. We apologize for the inconvenience caused and will work closely with operators, while keeping safety as our number one and overriding priority,” Airbus said in a message on Friday.

Around 6,000 of the jets were potentially impacted, Airbus said. Of those 6,000 jets, 209 belonged to American Airlines, the world’s largest A320 operator. Despite the alarm, American said on Saturday that it had updated the software on its fleet in time for Sunday, the busiest travel day of the year, and had avoided any lingering impact.

JetBlue, which also has a significant percentage of its fleet as A320s, had returned 137 of the 150 impacted aircraft by Monday morning. It says it is expecting to cancel at least 20 flights on Monday.

In the U.S., the issue also impacted six of United Airlines’ jets, which caused “minor disruptions to a few flights,” the carrier said. Delta Air Lines said that only a handful of its A320 fleet was impacted and it had completed the updates with essentially no impact on operations.

The issue led to major cancellations for some international carriers, including close to 100 ANA flights, which stranded more than 13,000 passengers in Japan. Others, including easyJet and Wizz Air, said on Monday that the updates had been completed without any flight cancellations.