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Jetstar’s operations are back to normal after a required software update from Airbus took almost half its A320 fleet out of commission over the weekend.
The update, pushed out by Airbus on Saturday after a recent incident involving a JetBlue A320, was required on 34 of Jetstar’s 85 A320/21 family aircraft, and caused significant delays and disruptions while the low-cost carrier rushed to implement it.
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Air New Zealand’s A320 fleet was also affected, but Qantas and Virgin, which also operate a limited number of A320-family aircraft, escaped unscathed.
The update had been applied to all of Jetstar’s required aircraft by 8:30am on Sunday, and flights were again operating normally as of Monday morning. Air New Zealand completed its own updates by 4:15pm local time on Sunday afternoon.
In a statement, Airbus said analysis of the JetBlue incident, which saw an A320 forced to divert after abruptly pitching down by itself mid-flight, revealed that “intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls”.
Around 6,000 A320s worldwide were affected, with the alert reflected in an Emergency Airworthiness Directive from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
“Airbus has consequently identified a significant number of A320 Family aircraft currently in-service which may be impacted,” the planemaker said.
“Airbus has worked proactively with the aviation authorities to request immediate precautionary action from operators via an Alert Operators Transmission (AOT) in order to implement the available software and/or hardware protection, and ensure the fleet is safe to fly.
“Airbus acknowledges these recommendations will lead to operational disruptions to passengers and customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and will work closely with operators, while keeping safety as our number one and overriding priority.”
The Airbus issue was part of a chaotic weekend for Australia’s aviation sector, with a fire at Melbourne Airport on Friday evening also forcing the evacuation of its T1 Qantas domestic terminal, leading to long queues of aircraft on the tarmac and flight delays of up to three hours.
“It was not customer-facing, but there are multiple storage areas in that space, and we’re assessing what caused the fire now,” the airport’s chief of aviation, Jim Parashos, told the ABC.
“I think given the circumstances of potential fire and smoke in the terminal, keeping them safe and staying on the aircraft would have been OK with many of those passengers.”
International passengers around Australia also suffered widespread delays on Sunday after the passport system went down nationwide, leaving Border Force officers to triage flights as they processed both inbound and outbound passengers manually.
The issue was resolved later on Sunday, with the cause under investigation.
