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DGCA shares update on Airbus A320 glitch, says software upgrades on 323 aircraft completed
A potential issue related to flight controls arose, with Airbus saying that software changes required to fix the issue would lead to flight disruptions.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India's aviation regular, on Sunday said that Indian airlines have completed software upgrades on 323 operational Airbus A320 family aircraft.
This comes after a potential issue related to flight controls arose, following which Airbus said that intense solar radiation might corrupt data critical to flight controls in a significant number of A320 family aircraft. It further said that software changes required to fix the issue were being made, and these would disrupt flight operations.
Initially, a total of 338 aircraft from the Indian A320 fleet – belonging to carriers IndiGo, Air India and Air India Express – were identified for software upgrades to fix the issue, PTI news agency reported.
Among these, 323 aircraft were operational, six were under base maintenance, and it was later decided that upgrades were not needed for nine of them in the Air India fleet, a senior DGCA official told PTI.
Indigo completed upgrades on all 200 of its operational A320 planes, and Air India finished upgrades of 100 operational planes, with six being under base maintenance and nine not needing fixing.
Air India Express completed upgrades for 23 A320 family aircraft, while two planes are under base maintenance for redelivery.
Which incident led to the Airbus alert and directive for global upgrade?
A JetBlue A320 experienced a sudden, un-commanded pitch-down on October 30, which was later traced to a malfunction in one of its elevator-aileron computers, ELAC-2. Investigators in the case found that “intense solar radiation” could corrupt data supporting the aircraft’s flight-control functions.
After the revelation, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive and Airbus too issued an alert to operators globally. EASA said the issue, if not corrected, “could lead in the worst-case scenario to an uncommanded elevator movement that may result in exceeding the aircraft’s structural capability.”
Following this, the DGCA too issued an Airworthiness Directive to carriers asking them to carry out the requisite software upgrades immediately. Airbus said more than 6,500 aircraft would need fixed, thus leading to airlines worldwide cancelling and delaying hundreds of flights on Saturday.
