Jetstar has grounded some of its Airbus fleet in Australia and cancelled domestic and international flights after the aerospace manufacturer ordered software changes to thousands of its A320 planes following a mid-air incident.
Ninety Jetstar flights were affected on Saturday with disruption expected to continue until Sunday, the airline’s head of flying operations, Tyrone Simes, told reporters at Melbourne airport.
Airbus said on Friday it was ordering an immediate software change on a “significant number” of its bestselling A320 family of aircraft, a narrow-body plane which is also used by Virgin Australia and Qantas.
Simes said on Saturday Airbus had issued Jetstar with a maintenance directive to reverse a software upgrade that had been installed on some planes and resulted in a malfunction.
He said 34 of Jetstar’s 85 Airbus fleet were affected, but engineers could complete the software update on the ground in Australia, which would take about two to three hours for each plane.
Jetstar said earlier on Saturday morning some of its flights were unable to depart, but did not immediately confirm how many planes were grounded or which routes would be affected.
“Safety is our number one priority. To respond to a precautionary action from Airbus, we have cancelled some Jetstar Airways flights,” the airline said.
“Our teams are working on options to get customers on their way as quickly as possible and are contacting affected customers directly.”
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Twelve Jetstar flights from Melbourne and 18 out of Sydney were cancelled on Saturday morning including international flights to Port Vila, Singapore and Bali. Two Jetstar flights into Perth and two departures from the same airport were cancelled.
The global recall was issued after an incident involving a JetBlue flight from Cancún, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, on 30 October, in which several passengers were hurt after a sudden drop in altitude.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency, which is the main certifying authority for A320 aircraft, described it in the recall notice as an “uncommanded and limited pitch down event” but said if uncorrected it could lead in the worst-case scenario to “an uncommanded elevator movement that may result in exceeding the aircraft’s structural capability”.
Qantas also owns planes in the A320 family, but the airline said on Saturday none of its planes or flights were affected as none of its fleet required the software update.
Virgin Australia operates four A320-class planes on its Western Australian regional service but said its Boeing 737 fleet was able to cover the small number of flights that A320s were to have flown.
“We do not anticipate any impact to either Virgin Australia or our regional airline operations,” a spokesperson for the company said on Saturday morning.
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Air New Zealand operates A320 aircraft in its domestic and international network. The airline said it had cancelled 12 services on Saturday and was expecting “some further disruption today”, but said all its services between New Zealand and Australia were running.
“Customers travelling today should continue to check the Air NZ app or website for the latest information on their flight,” its chief safety and risk officer, Nathan McGraw, said.
“We will provide updates on impacts to our schedule as soon as we have more information. We know unexpected changes are frustrating, and we are working hard to keep customers moving wherever possible.”
McGraw said “this is a precautionary software update and does not present an immediate safety risk to our flights”.
Airbus said in a statement it had ordered the software update after the JetBlue incident revealed that intense solar radiation might corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.
“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,” a spokesperson said.
The company acknowledged the “recommendations” would result in disruptions to passengers and apologised for the inconvenience caused.