News
Airbus emergency software fix for A320 fleets leads to weekend of disruptions
December 1st 2025
Airlines across the Asia-Pacific, and the rest of the world, have worked through the weekend to implement a precautionary software upgrade on their A320 family fleet following the discovery of a potential safety issue from Airbus. Read More » The manufacturer requested via an Alert Operators Transmission (AOT), operators of A320 family aircraft install an available software fix after intense solar radiation was found to have the potential to corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls. The alert was reflected in an emergency airworthiness directive issued by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). "I want to sincerely apologise to our airline customers and passengers who are impacted now," Airbus CEO, Guillaume Faury, said in a LinkedIn post. "But we consider that nothing is more important than safety when people fly on one of our Airbus aircraft - like millions do every day." The order led to significant disruptions on Saturday as airlines cancelled flights to implement the software upgrade. However, by Sunday a number of carriers within the region announced they had completed the software upgrade and were in the process of restoring their schedules to normal.
"Regarding our Airbus A320/A321 fleet, mandatory software updates to certain aircraft systems were required under an Airworthiness Directive (AD) issued by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). We implemented these updates across our fleet," All Nippon Airways said. AirAsia said it was in full compliance with the emergency airworthiness directive, while Jetstar, Philippine Airlines and Vietjet also all declared their software upgrades had taken place. "Philippine Airlines (PAL) confirms that all PAL aircraft scheduled to operate commercial flights and covered by the recent Airbus and European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) directive on the mandatory Elevator and Aileron Computer (ELAC) software update have successfully completed the required upgrade," PAL said. Jetstar said its teams worked "around the clock" to resolve the Airbus fleet software issue. However there were still some delays yesterday (Sunday). "We’ll continue to contact affected customers directly if their flight is impacted," Jetstar said.
