Global Airlines Finish Software Fixes on Thousands of Jets After Record Recall

WASHINGTON D.C: Global aviation successfully navigated one of the largest aircraft recalls in history this weekend, with airlines scrambling to install urgent software fixes on approximately 6,000 Airbus A320-family jets—a tally representing more than half of the world’s most-delivered fleet.

The recall followed a major safety alert issued Friday after investigators linked an unintended loss of altitude on a JetBlue flight on October 30 (Cancun to Newark) to a software vulnerability caused by intense solar flare radiation corrupting critical flight control data. The incident injured 10 passengers.

Airlines worldwide worked through the night to revert the software in a critical flight computer—a process taking two to three hours per jet.

The speed of the response appears to have headed off the worst-case scenario. By Saturday, major carriers like United Airlines reported completing all updates, while American Airlines, the world’s largest A320 operator, expected to complete fixes on 209 affected jets by the end of the day.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy affirmed the success for the busiest US travel weekend of the year:

“All impacted U.S. carriers have reported great progress, and are on track to meet the deadline of this Sunday at midnight to complete the work. [Travelers] SHOULD NOT expect any major disruptions.”

However, the rapid nature of the recall still caused cancellations. JetBlue cancelled about 70 flights scheduled for Sunday as they raced to update their fleet, and Japan’s ANA Holdings cancelled 95 flights on Saturday.

The A320 family recently overtook the Boeing 737 as the industry’s most-delivered model, with about 11,300 jets in service. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury issued a sincere apology to customers and passengers impacted by the surprise directive.

Despite the initial fears, industry sources indicated that fewer than the original estimate of 1,000 older jets will require the time-consuming hardware changes, with most only needing a simple software reversion.