Name: Airbus flights disrupted for urgent software update | BBC News
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Passengers around the world have been told to expect disruption and delays as airlines work to install urgent software modifications to thousands of Airbus planes.

The company says it's discovered that intense solar radiation could corrupt data, which is crucial to flight controls on some of their aircraft.

The issue affects the A320, its best selling plane, but also similar models.

The Airbus A320, the short haul workhorse of choice for many airlines around the world.

Airbus said radiation from the sun was found to interfere with sensors critical to the aircraft's flight controls.

More than 6,000 Airbus planes worldwide are believed to be affected by the problem.

For many, the fix should be a straightforward software update.

But some older aircraft may require more extensive hardware replacements.

This is a very rare event indeed, but this is why, you know, Airbus and the European regulator have said,

look, we've identified this potential issue and on a precautionary basis, you know, the airlines need to take these steps with this maintenance.

We're in November, typically a very low-demand season for flying,

but even so, if you take some aircraft out for a even just a few hours, they are scheduled so intensively that that can lead to problems.

Enough delays that will turn into cancellations.

EasyJet says it has already completed the software update on many of its planes and plans to operate its flying program normally on Saturday.

While British Airways also operates a significant number of Airbus planes, only three require the update.

The airline said its passengers should not face significant disruption.

Heathrow Airport, the UK's busiest, says it's operating normally,

while Manchester Airport says it's not expecting widespread disruption.

Gatwick says delays are possible, but that only a small number of airlines are affected.

The Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, says the impact on UK airlines seems limited.

The problem was first identified in October when a JetBlue flight from Cancun in Mexico to Newark in the United States experienced a sudden drop in altitude.

Significant enough for some of the passengers to be injured.

The plane was forced to make an emergency landing.

While airlines worldwide expect any disruption to be short-lived,

the fact that all affected aircraft need to be fixed at the same time will cause an inevitable logistical challenge.

Passengers around the world are urged to check with their airlines before traveling.

Sidney Decker is a Griffith University professor and a former pilot.

What is important to understand is that most airliners today,

basically from the late 1980s, early 1990s onward, are so-called fly-by-wires.

So they send electrical Signals from the autopilot or the controls in the cockpit to the flight surfaces and control them there.

So it's no longer hydraulic lines or push rods or things.

That means that you've got computers helping you do these things, computers that are not necessarily built by Airbus.

The computer here is the one that does the pitch and a little bit of the ailerons that bank the wings.

But it turns out that indeed, solar radiation affects the way,

or in fact affects the data that travels across the electronic circuits to the flight control at the back of the plane,

thus doing something unexpected and funky.

And that's what we saw, wasn't it, back in October when there was this aircraft that suddenly lost altitude, wasn't it?

30th of October, it only lost about 100ft over some 5 to 7 seconds, but it still injured 15 passengers.

And of course, if you're a pilot on this thing, you look at the other pilot, you go, did you make it do this?

And then of course you go, well, in that case, we'd better get this thing on the ground.

That's where the system works well, Lucy, because everybody else gets sent out of the way,

you get priority handling, put the airplane on the ground, you talk to maintenance, maintenance eventually talks to the manufacturer,

and then the manufacturer starts looking into this.

You don't want to sort of alarmist, over, respond and overreact.

And then we get to this situation now where manufacturer and regulators have agreed yet now you have to park this airplane,

do the software upgrade or downgrade, actually, because we're going back to the previous software before you fly it again.

And in some cases, that could just mean a matter of hours, couldn't it?

But in some planes, my understanding is that they'll actually need to physically remove what's currently in place and replace it.

So imagine having an iPad or some, some other device that refuses to do a software update because it's too old.

And that's why there is some differential in how airlines are affected by this, in which case some indeed require hardware replacement as well.

Or are there other planes, you know, other groups of planes that we're going to be seeing affected by this as well?

It is so far unlikely that we've seen any of the cosmic radiation.

And of course, we're in a very busy period of an 11 year solar cycle.

We haven't seen the effect of that on other airplanes yet.

But other manufacturers have had their share of electronic and still have their share of electronic issues that they need to figure out as well.