Airbus, the French aerospace giant, has successfully implemented a software update that has allowed flights to return to normal operations following a significant grounding of its A320 family aircraft. The reality was nearly 6,000 jets, including the A318, A319, A320 and A321 variants. The fallout from this incident led to massive delays and cancellations for multiple airlines. Air France was particularly hard hit, with hundreds of its flights to and from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport canceled.
This was the needed software update after the FAA was directed by Airbus to a yet undiscovered warning that was needing immediate action. French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said that all of the updates went “extremely well” on more than 5,000 Airbus aircraft. According to the most recent updates, there were still fewer than 100 Airbus aircraft left that hadn’t yet gone through the update process.
The consequences of this grounding were indeed felt all around the world. Even Australian budget carrier Jetstar had to cancel 90 flights, directly due to the fiasco. Cumulatively, the incident resulted in at least 15 injuries from passengers impacted by the many outages and delays.
On a more optimistic note, Easyjet rejoiced that it had managed to complete the software upgrade across the majority of its fleet. The airline says it will fly business as usual in spite of the troubled history. Manchester Airport during the inquiry also pointed out that it had not expected very major issues to arise from that incident. As with Luton Airport, all our largest airports except Birmingham claimed to experience “no expected impact” from the software grounding.
Airbus’s rapid response and the collective action taken by multiple airlines allowed most of the fallout from this incident to be blunted. These updates, completed months ahead of deadline, have helped bring back both carriers’ — and fliers’ — confidence in flight operations.