Airbus orders software fix to thousands of planes due to solar radiation risk

Flights had been delayed and cancelled globally after Airbus ordered fixes to six,000 of its A320 collection planes, according to The Guardian.

The corporate said it’s taking action as a result of “evaluation of a current occasion involving an A320 Household plane has revealed that intense photo voltaic radiation might corrupt information essential to the functioning of flight controls.”

Citing business sources, Reuters reports that the occasion in query was an October 30 JetBlue flight from Cancun, Mexico to Newark, New Jersey, by which the airplane all of a sudden misplaced altitude and needed to make an emergency touchdown in Tampa.

The Federal Aviation Administration has reportedly issued an emergency airworthiness directive calling for the affected planes to revert to earlier software program earlier than they will fly once more. A smaller subset might want to have their {hardware} modified, Airbus mentioned.