Airlines race to update software after Airbus alert

New Delhi: Three Indian airlines on Saturday rushed for a software upgrade of its Airbus A320 fleet to address a potential flight control issue and completed the task in more than 80% of the 338 such aircraft after Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) barred flying of such planes till mandatory modifications are made.

IndiGo, Air India and Air India Express have said that they are expected to go in for the software update for the Airbus aircraft by the end of Saturday. While five cancellations were made due to the system upgrade, there have been a few delays of 60-90 minutes at various airports.

The system upgrade was necessitated after an Airbus A320 aircraft recently had a “brief and limited loss of altitude” due to malfunction of the ELAC (Elevator and Aileron Computer) used for flight controls and Airbus saying that intense solar radiation could corrupt data critical to flight controls.

The directive for software upgrade was triggered by an incident involving a JetBlue flight from Cancun in Mexico, to Newark in the US on October 30 when the A320 family aircraft had a sudden, uncommanded drop in altitude due to a flight-control problem. The plane had an emergency landing in Florida and people who were injured in the incident were taken to a hospital.

In India, IndiGo operates 200 A320 family planes while Air India has 113 and Air India Express 25.

Of the 338 aircraft, software upgrade is complete in 270 aircraft while remaining 68 will be completed by the end of the day.

Of these, according to data available with DGCA at 5.30 pm on Saturday, IndiGo had a software upgrade on 184 of its A320 aircraft while Air India had 69 and Air India Express had 17.

The upgrades were undertaken at the airlines’ bases in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.

On Saturday, DGCA issued an Airworthiness Directive to airlines asking them to carry out the “mandatory modifications” following Airbus issuing an alert to operators globally and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA) coming out with an Emergency Airworthiness Directive regarding the potential issue.

In a statement, IndiGo said it was undertaking all required inspections and updates to its A320 family aircraft in full accordance with directives issued by EASA and Airbus. It said no flights have been cancelled as a result of these checks though a few flights “may experience minimal delays”. 

Air India also said there have been no cancellations and no major impact on schedule integrity across its network. However, it said some flights may be slightly delayed or rescheduled. “We have already completed the reset on over 40% of our aircraft that are impacted by this, and are confident of covering the entire fleet within the timeline prescribed by EASA,” it said.