New York, Nov 29 (EFE).- The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) demanded this Saturday that airlines replace or modify Airbus software by tomorrow, in which problems have been detected. The FAA said today on its X profile that it has issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive (EAD) for certain Airbus A319 and A320/321 aircraft. "The EAD requires replacing or modifying the software that controls the aircraft's elevators," the regulator clarified, adding that it "takes effect immediately." According to the directive, operators must replace the software before the aircraft fly again at 00:01 on Sunday, November 30, and it is also prohibited from installing it on any aircraft. Airbus notified airlines flying the A320 yesterday of the need to update the software on part of its fleet after detecting an incident in a flight control program caused by exposure to solar radiation. The company explained that this could affect "a significant number of A320 family aircraft," with various industry sources estimating around 6,000 models are affected. The software issues were detected after a Jetblue flight from Cancun (Mexico) to Newark (New Jersey) had to make an emergency landing in Florida after a sudden loss of altitude. U.S. airlines are already working to fix the problem; American Airlines, for example, said this morning in a statement that only four aircraft remained to be updated out of its total of 209 aircraft that included this software. Meanwhile, Delta stated in a note picked up by CNN that less than 50 of its A321neo models will be affected and anticipated it would fix the problem by this morning. Photo EFE.
