SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Airbus, the European plane-maker, says it has discovered a problem with the flight control systems on its bestselling A320 family of jets. It is ordering airlines to make an immediate software switch that could temporarily ground thousands of jets around the world. The timing is especially bad for airlines in the U.S., which is in the midst of one of the busiest travel weekends of the year. NPR transportation correspondent Joel Rose joins us. Joel, thanks for being with us.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
SIMON: What does Airbus say?
ROSE: The company said Friday that it has discovered a problem with the flight control systems in its most popular family of jets, the A320 family. Specifically, Airbus says intense solar radiation may corrupt the data in systems that are critical to the operation of the aircraft. Airbus made this discovery after an incident last month when a JetBlue plane plunged uncontrollably for a short time on a flight from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey. Several passengers were hurt following a sharp loss of altitude, and the flight had to make an emergency landing in Tampa. Now Airbus is notifying airlines that they need to take immediate steps to prevent something like that from happening again. Aviation regulators in Europe and the Federal Aviation Administration issued orders yesterday that airlines have to do this before these planes carry passengers again.
SIMON: How hard will it be to fix?
ROSE: Well, basically, Airbus is instructing airlines to change the software on this particular computer system, either by rolling back to an earlier version or replacing the computer system with one that is running the earlier software version. It's not a difficult fix as these things go, but it will take time - several hours per plane. In a statement, the CEO of Airbus said the fix has been causing, quote, "significant logistical challenges and delays," unquote. The company apologized for the inconvenience to its customers and to passengers, but said that safety is its top priority.
SIMON: Thousands of planes could be affected. Help put that into some perspective for us.
ROSE: Sure. So the A320 family is now the most flown plane in the world - more than 9,000 in all when you include the A319, the A320 and the A321. It's a huge part of fleets in Europe and Asia. Not quite as popular in North America, but still, U.S. airlines have over 1,600 of these jets in their fleets collectively, according to the aviation analytics company Cirium. Out of that 1,600, the FAA says the emergency order applies to about 545 Airbus jets in the U.S. The U.S. carriers with the most A320 family planes are American Airlines, with over 300, followed by Delta and JetBlue, each with more than 200. Delta said it expects that fewer than 50 planes in its fleet will require the software fix. American said about 200 of its jets needed the fix, but that nearly all of those aircraft already had the software change completed as of this morning.
SIMON: Millions of people across the U.S. are expected to fly this weekend. How much will it affect them?
ROSE: You know, the timing is very bad for holiday travelers and for the airlines. This is one of their busiest weekends of the year - particularly Sunday, with more than 51,000 flights scheduled, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. There are 46,000 flights today, another 49,000 on Monday. So there is not a lot of extra slack in the system. Taking any number of planes out of service is going to hurt. It is just a question of...
SIMON: Yeah.
ROSE: ...How bad this is going to be. Even if it is a relatively small number of planes that are out of service, it could still result in dozens or hundreds of cancellations and delays, which then ripple across the country as the day goes on. But that said, I think it's possible that the biggest impacts of all this will be in Europe and in Asia, where the airlines depend heavily on these planes to carry millions of passengers every day.
SIMON: NPR's Joel Rose. Thanks so much for being with us.
ROSE: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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