Global airlines race to fix Airbus jets; US reports little disruption

By Tim Kelly, Abhijith Ganapavaram and Tim Hepher

TOKYO/NEW DELHI/PARIS, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Global airlines scrambled to fix a software glitch on Airbus A320 jets on Saturday as a partial recall by the European planemaker halted hundreds of flights in Asia and Europe and threatened U.S. travel over the busiest weekend of the year.

Airlines worked through the night after global regulators told them to remedy the problem before resuming flights. Several carriers on Saturday said they had finished or nearly completed the fix to their fleets, including American Airlines, United Airlines, Air India, Delta Air Lines and Hungary’s Wizz Air. Many reported no impact on operations.

The overnight effort by airlines appeared to help head off the worst-case scenario and capped the number of flight delays in Asia and Europe. In the United States, which will face high demand after the Thanksgiving holiday period, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that impacted U.S. carriers "have reported great progress, and are on track to meet the deadline of this Sunday at midnight to complete the work."

He said on X that travellers "SHOULD NOT expect any major disruptions."

Asia-based aviation analyst Brendan Sobie said the update was "not as chaotic as some people might think," although "it does create some short-term headaches for operations."

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury apologised to airlines and passengers after the surprise recall of 6,000 planes or more than half of the global A320-family fleet, which recently overtook the Boeing 737 as the industry's most-delivered model.

"I want to sincerely apologise to our airline customers and passengers who are impacted now," Faury posted on LinkedIn.

Friday's alert followed an unintended loss of altitude on an October 30 JetBlue flight from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, which injured 10 passengers, according to France's BEA accident agency, which is probing the incident.

AIRBUS RECALL LUCKY TIMING FOR SOME AIRLINES

The alert landed at a time of day when many European airlines and Asian airlines are winding down their schedules, which mostly do not require the short- to medium-haul jets like the A320 to be flying at night, leaving time for repairs.

In the United States, however, it came during the day ahead of the busy Thanksgiving holiday travel weekend.

American Airlines, the world's largest A320 operator, said 209 of its 480 jets needed the fix, below initial estimates, most of which it expected to complete by Saturday. United Airlines told Reuters on Saturday that all its aircraft had been updated.

European low-fare carrier Wizz Air said updates had been implemented overnight on all its affected jets and AirAsia, one of the world's largest A320 customers, said it aimed to complete fixes in 48 hours. India's aviation regulator said on Saturday that carriers IndiGo and Air India were expected to complete the process on Saturday. ANA Holdings cancelled 95 flights on Saturday, affecting 13,500 travellers.

Steven Greenway, CEO of Saudi carrier Flyadeal, said that the recall had hit late in the evening, which had avoided more serious disruption. The airline said it had fixed all 13 affected jets and would resume normal operations by midnight.

"It was a great team effort but our luck also held up in the timing," Greenway told Reuters. 

Airlines must revert to a previous version of software in a computer that helps determine the nose angle of the affected jets and in some cases must also change the hardware itself, mainly on older planes in service. The fix must be completed before the planes can fly again with passengers, a process needing two to three hours per jet.

Globally, there are about 11,300 of the single-aisle jets in service, including 6,440 of the core A320 model. Those include some of the largest and busiest low-cost carriers.

Tracker data from Cirium and FlightAware showed most global airports operating with good-to-moderate levels of delays.

By Saturday, Airbus was telling airlines that repairs to some of the A320 jets affected may be less burdensome than first thought, industry sources said, with fewer than the original estimate of 1,000 needing the time-consuming hardware changes.

Even so, industry executives said the abrupt action was a rare and potentially costly headache at a time when maintenance is under pressure worldwide from labour and parts shortages.

There were also unresolved questions about the impact of solar flare radiation blamed for the JetBlue incident, which is being treated by French investigators as an "incident," the lowest of three categories of potential safety emergency.

"Any operational challenges that come at short notice and affecting a large part of your operation is tough to deal with," said UK-based aviation consultant John Strickland.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Tim Kelly and Maki Shiraki in Tokyo, Abhijith Ganapavaram in New Delhi, Sam McKeith in Sydney, Ben Blanchard in Taipei, Raphael Satter in Washington, Jack Kim in Seoul, Ziyi Tang in Beijing, John Geddie in Hong Kong, Menna Alaaeldin in Cairo, Michele Kambas in Cyprus; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Alexander Smith, Mike Colias, Sergio Non and Diane Craft)