Airbus Issues Major A320 Recall, Threatening Global Flight Disruption (reuters.com) 58
Europe's Airbus said on Friday it was ordering immediate repairs to 6,000 of its widely used A320 family of jets in a sweeping recall affecting more than half the global fleet, threatening upheaval during the busiest travel weekend of the year in the United States and disruption worldwide. From a report: The setback appears to be among the largest recalls affecting Airbus in its 55-year history and comes weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered model. At the time Airbus issued its bulletin to the plane's more than 350 operators, some 3,000 A320-family jets were in the air.
The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple, but must be carried out before the planes can fly again, other than repositioning to repair centres, according to the bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters. Airlines from the United States to South America, Europe, India and New Zealand warned the repairs could potentially cause flight delays or cancellations.
The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple, but must be carried out before the planes can fly again, other than repositioning to repair centres, according to the bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters. Airlines from the United States to South America, Europe, India and New Zealand warned the repairs could potentially cause flight delays or cancellations.
I commend their bravery (Score:5, Insightful)
... for calling themselves out when they think there may be a major issue with their airplanes.
Unlike another major manufacturer that hides, dithers, and delays.
Wait, AI missing from this news (Score:1)
The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software
Is it anything to do with undoing an AI produced PR? Or how about some more information about how a newer version has problems due to some "fix" ? How did that come about? What change was it, what drove the change, and why did an update end up being problematic instead of fixing issues? Concerned potential air travelers deserve answers. Maybe we need an FAA that instead of being in bed with air travel, acts more like the ATF, goes after the industry hard.
Re:Wait, AI missing from this news (Score:5, Interesting)
- The risk is related to solar storms (so more accurately atmospheric neutrons).
- Most of the airplanes will undergo a software rollback to a previous version.
- Some of the airplanes will need a hardware retrofit... but this is just because the software upload cannot be performed as easily on the affected equipment.
So where does this lead us to ? An error in the EDAC/ECC code protecting the memory from neutrons-induced bit flips ? From a hardware perspective it is the most likely explanation, but it would be suprising to have such a bug introduced in a software update since this would be quite a low-level function which would be unlikely to be updated. A bug in the error handling code when such an error happens ? This could be more likely, since error handling structures can be shared between several components. Especially if the error in question is very rare (e.g. double error in the same word) and is not correctly tested during regression testing.
Re:Wait, AI missing from this news (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Wait, AI missing from this news (Score:4, Insightful)
I would be surprised if software updating an aircraft is that simple. It probably needs to be controlled and tested after the update, with records kept by maintenance staff, and notifications sent to pilots.
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They aren't complete idiots, if the solution was that simple they would do it that way.
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News I get is some big airlines performed all updates in an evening and are back to normal, but a small fraction of planes will take much longer time. I assume these are the oldest planes and they need specialised hardware for the update (e.g. floppy disks, emulators).
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News I get is some big airlines performed all updates in an evening and are back to normal, but a small fraction of planes will take much longer time. I assume these are the oldest planes and they need specialised hardware for the update (e.g. floppy disks, emulators).
Schiphol handles a lot of those Airbus planes every day. From the moment I heard about this immediate requirement at roughly midnight UTC Friday/Saturday I followed all the flight departures for Saturday and only about 4 flights were cancelled.
I didn't bother to check what aircraft they were because 4 cancelled flights seems about normal on any given day for all I know. I checked several times throughout Saturday. Schiphol has many, many flights every day.
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Being able to automatically update the software that actually moves the flight control surfaces over the internet is pretty much top on the terrorist wish list. I wouldn't fly on a plane where that was possible, and I don't think there are many pilots that would be ok with this.
Flight control surface software should be air gapped from any kind of remote network, even private ones.
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From the directive:
"This condition, if not corrected, could lead in the worst-case scenario to an uncommanded elevator
movement that may result in exceeding the aircraftâ(TM)s structural capability."
Thats a bit worrying. Surely the fuselage should be able to cope with any possible elevator input or am I being naive?
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A little naive.
Consider the angle of elevator deflection needed to lift the nose at takeoff(~140MPH) on a runway 8,000 feet above sea level. I have no idea what the number actually is, but let's assume it's 30 degrees. That's fine at that speed. But, a 30 degree deflection at 500MPH would create such a dramatic and sudden pitch that the G forces and wind pressure would shear the wings off. Many regard the wings coming off mid flight as being sub-optimal.
Now, the software is designed to prevent that extreme
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you have no idea what you talking about.
"Consider the angle of elevator deflection needed to lift the nose at takeoff(~140MPH) on a runway 8,000 feet above sea level. "
there are only hand full of runways at or above 8000ft
the defection need to get the aircraft to rotate on it main trucks is about 2-5deg. a 30deg deflection at 140kts on the runway would just slam the tail into the ground its called a tailstrike. they are design to handle this and are even tested to survive it. One test a airplane has to pass
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I don't understand anything of that, so what is your proposed scenario for "uncommanded elevator movement that may result in exceeding the aircraft's structural capability."?
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nope not a pilot may have got the tas ias messup up i was half alsep. have not seen my ea-6b ince the 90s mine was metal
Control surfaces can absolutely break (Score:4)
See American Flight 587 [wikipedia.org]; also Maneuvering Speed [wikipedia.org].
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there are only hand full of runways at or above 8000ft
Thanks for backing me up and confirming that they exist.
the defection need to get the aircraft to rotate on it main trucks is about 2-5deg.
Thanks for letting me know. I did say that I had no idea what the deflection was. I was simply trying to illustrate the point that 30 degree deflection is available and perhaps required under certain circumstances.
there is no control on an aircraft that if it goes to max deflection capable of breaking an airframe.
Then why do manufacturers have maneuvering speed limits and why have we had planes crash where the wings or other control surfaces shear off due to improper control movements?
airbus can not do 500mph TAS its max speed is something like 240 TAS
True Air Speed for the A320 at 30,000 feet is typically and most de
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This was after 15 were already injured due to this issue [cbsnews.com].
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Looks like they got lucky.
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That was the incident that triggered it apparently. Tbh a 100 foot drop in altitude in 7 seconds is hardly divebombing territory.
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Indeed. Only one of the two major civilian airplane makers is not ok with blood on their hands.
Brooo (Score:4, Insightful)
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They have to wine and dine a few gov't officials before that step. [leehamnews.com]
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Just out of interest, did DOGE go after the FAA at any time?
We had a Slashdot poster (posting as a/c of course) blaming DEI whenever anything went wrong at Boeing, as you can imagine that was a lot of posts.
Elmo wanted SpaceX to take Verizon's FAA contract (Score:3)
Just out of interest, did DOGE go after the FAA at any time?
Elon Musk says upgrade of FAA’s air traffic control system is failing and SpaceX needs to take over Verizon’s contract [cnn.com]
February 27, 2025
New York CNN —
Elon Musk said Thursday that Verizon’s efforts to provide a critically needed upgrade to the FAA’s air traffic control system is failing. And he said that it is important that Starlink, a unit of his SpaceX satellite and rocket company, take over.
“The Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking
That's concerning (Score:1)
They found out somebody accidentally installed Boeing bolts.
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IIRC the Boeing issue was because no one had installed those "Boeing bolts".
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Boeing hired Usain Nonbolt
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Installed Boeing blots are actually fine. Usually. The problem is with not installing Boeing bolts.
This is apparently the problem being fixed (Score:1)
Replacing the software will take “a few hours” on most planes but for some 1000 aircraft, the process “will take weeks”, a source close to the issue told AFP."
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Sure sounds like it, or the version of ECC was not sufficient. Also, silicon-based chips are more susceptible to radiation than GaAs, which is why GaAs was used in the early space program and maybe still today.
Perhaps they ought to invest in OTA updates? (Score:2)
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Yeah, great idea. Do a remote OTA update on a plane about to carry 200 passengers to 40K feet without bothering to test it first. What could possibly go wrong.
Do you understand the difference in safety requirements between a car and an airliner?
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Yeah, great idea. Do a remote OTA update on a plane about to carry 200 passengers to 40K feet without bothering to test it first. What could possibly go wrong.
When you put it that way, maybe air travel should be banned for safety? Or at least severely limited (there's no constitutional right to plane flying). Have you ever looked around the underbelly of a airliner? A spaghetti mess of wiring, fuel, and hydraulic hoses. A lot has to not go wrong for the plane to take off, fly and land safely.
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Hardware can be physically inspected, software once installed cannot. All you can do is test it.
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As for a difference between cars and airliner, well, OTA being applied to Teslas for example will update maybe 100K cars in one night, perhaps as may a million (if not first deployment wave), so I guess a lot more car passengers are exposed to its m
I don't understand the outdated thinking. (Score:3, Funny)
The issue is a software thing, that is the easiest thing to conceal and misdirect.
Why can't they just falsify the update record, then if planes crash and people die simply shift the blame to the pilots? I thought Airbus were trying to be a major player in modern aerospace? So unprofessional. Sad.
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The fact that this defect managed to proliferate through their entire fleet of 6000+ aircraft sold to major carriers ought to show you that they're well on their way!
1 in 20 million ? (Score:1)
The cause: JetBlue 1230 had uncommanded pitch-down (Score:3)
"This emergency action stems from JetBlue Flight 1230, which experienced a sudden altitude loss on October 30, 2025, resulting in at least 15 hospitalizations and triggering global regulatory scrutiny.
On October 30, 2025, JetBlue A320-200 N605JB operating Flight B6-1230 from Cancun to Newark encountered an uncommanded pitch-down event while cruising at FL350, approximately 70 nm southwest of Tampa.
* The aircraft dropped roughly 100 feet in about seven seconds
* The autopilot remained engaged throughout
* The crew diverted to Tampa International Airport for an emergency landing
* At least 15 passengers, including children, were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries
Although the aircraft remained controllable, the event revealed a critical failure mode inside one of the flight-control computers."
https://aeropeep.com/easa-issu... [aeropeep.com]
Re:The cause: JetBlue 1230 had uncommanded pitch-d (Score:4, Informative)
During the JetBlue Flight 1230 event:
1. Solar radiation disrupted memory pathways within the ELAC B L104 unit
2. The corrupted data generated an erroneous pitch-down command
3. The autopilot remained engaged, complicating the aircraft’s response
4. The aircraft briefly lost altitude
5. Redundant flight-control systems—another ELAC and multiple SECs—prevented loss of control
ibidem
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Sounds like they caught a case of MCAS.
Gesundheit.
Short disruption... (Score:2)
I read last night that some airlines had already finished their software updates yesterday and are flying today as normal.
This will be over soon, but of course it is not fun for those who had their flights right in the middle of it.
Software change, not a recall (Score:2)
The aircraft owners are doing the software change and most should be done within a few days.
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The aircraft owners are doing the software change and most should be done within a few days.
The software change is reportedly to roll back to a previous version of the software (which did not have this particular issue, although the updated version was presumably introduced to fix some other issue).
Most airplanes already require regular daily checks (think of it as checking the oil levels, but there is a lot more to check on an airplane than the fluid levels) usually performed at night when the planes are not being flown. Adding a few hours of software rollback to an aircraft's daily checks is
Sudden uncommanded drop in altitude :o (Score:3)
The Elevator Aileron Computer (ELAC) software version L104 on JetBlue Flight 1230 (A320-200, registration N605JB) malfunctioned due to solar radiation corrupting flight control data, causing the uncommanded pitch-down and rapid descent from FL350 near Tampa on October 30, 2025. This system processes pilot inputs to control elevators (pitch) and ailerons (roll).
L103 Immunity:
ELAC L103 resists solar-induced data corruption through more robust fault tolerance and data handling that prevents bit flips from triggering unsafe commands, unlike L104's vulnerable processing changes.
Upgrade Purpose:
Airbus released L104 under its "Safety Beyond Standard" program to bolster A320 safety with enhanced flight-envelope protections, including pitch attitude limits in alternate law to avert stalls and better failure recovery, mirroring A350 features.
Major recall (Score:2)
Major recall is OK, as long as it's not Total Recall.
They can always try to turn them off and on again.
Seems hard to believe (Score:2)
I find it interesting anyone would offload error detection and correction to application software. Not only are you needlessly increasing local complexity in doing that any possible machinery you implement to accomplish this in software is itself subject to failure from same sources of arbitrary corruption.
Why would someone do this instead of using hardware with some sort of RAS with memory mirroring, pool scrubbing, multi-bit error correction...etc? If you are extra paranoid just add more memory and or C