Abundance of caution: How flight hit by solar flare sparked rush for Airbus fix

Airlines across the world cancelled hundreds of flights and scrambled to upgrade software on more than 6,000 aircraft over the weekend, though the impact was far from significant in India.

- Neha LM Tripathi

The scramble was triggered by a rare safety directive following evidence that intense solar radiation could corrupt flight control systems on some Airbus planes, including the ubiquitous A320.

The urgent fix was issued by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency late Friday and came after a recent incident involving a JetBlue jetliner. The warning stated that the flaw — which can mostly be fixed with a software update but can require some hardware changes — can potentially lead to uncommanded aircraft movement that could exceed structural limits in the worst-case scenario.

The directive affects more than half of all A320 family aircraft in service globally — the most-delivered commercial airliner in history.

“This condition, 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," the European flight safety regulator warned.

Indian airlines moved swiftly to comply with the directive, upgrading 270 of their 338 affected Airbus aircraft by Saturday evening as they raced to meet regulators' tight timeline. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said a total of 200 IndiGo aircraft, 113 of Air India and 25 of Air India Express aircraft were impacted by the directive.

While no flights were cancelled by the airlines, several were delayed, government officials said. "First half of the day saw more delays in the flights for the three airlines," an official said, adding that nearly 5% of IndiGo's total flights were delayed until 1 pm. The flights were initially delayed for a couple of hours, but these delays were reduced to an hour.