Airlines worldwide have been forced to cancel Airbus A320 flights to carry out a necessary software update.
SAS announces that their flights are operating as normal after installing the software overnight.
A recent incident with an A320 plane has revealed that strong solar radiation can cause the control of the aircraft to be affected. The reason is that the plane’s software is not working as it should, as the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus announced on Friday.
The A320 is Airbus’ most used aircraft with more than 11,000 in service around the world. Over 6,500 planes may be in need of the update and may not take off until it is completed. It has led to hundreds of canceled flights around the world with perhaps the biggest impact on travelers in the US where the celebration of Thanksgiving means many are on the move.
No interference
The airline SAS writes on Saturday that all their flights will go as usual.
“Following a new Emergency Airworthiness Directive from EASA that was issued yesterday, the SAS team has worked diligently throughout the night to install the necessary software on all affected aircraft,” writes SAS’s communications manager Alexandra Lindgren Kaoukji to TT.
According to the Norwegian public service company NRK, Norwegian has no plans for the current model. Finnair states that it carried out all updates on the twelve affected planes during the night to Saturday and that all flights should go as usual, HBL reports.
Apologize
Sources with insight into the situation tell Bloomberg that the majority of aircraft can carry out a simple update from the cockpit. But around 1,000 older planes will also need to update hardware and be out of service for a longer time.
In a post on X on Saturday, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury apologized to airlines and passengers affected by the unplanned update.
“However, we believe that nothing is more important than safety when people fly on one of our Airbus aircraft, which millions of people do every day,” he writes.
