FAA Orders Airlines to Urgently Replace Airbus Software

The FAA this Saturday ordered airlines to replace or modify Airbus software by tomorrow, in which problems have been detected. U.S. airlines are already working to fix the issue; American Airlines, for example, said in a statement this morning that only four planes remained to be updated out of its total of 209 aircraft that included this software. Airbus yesterday notified airlines flying the A320 of the need to update the software on part of its fleet following an incident detected in a flight control program caused by exposure to solar radiation. 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. 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, and it "takes effect immediately." According to the company, this could affect "a significant number of A320 family aircraft," and various industry sources put the affected models at around 6,000. 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 losing altitude abruptly. Meanwhile, Delta said in a note picked up by CNN that less than 50 of its A321neo models will be affected, and it anticipates it will fix the problem by this morning. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.