Software updates completed for over half of affected A320 family planes in India: DGCA data

As many as 338 A320 family aircraft operated by Indian airlines require the software upgrade to address a potential issue related to flight controls and modifications have been carried out in more than half of the affected fleet according to DGCA dataSources told PTI that there are no flight cancellations but there are delays in the range of 6090 minutes for some flights as the software updates are being carried out for the affected planesOn Friday Airbus said intense solar radiation might corrupt data critical to flight controls in a significant number of A320 family aircraft and that the software changes required to fix the issue would lead to operational disruptionsThe software upgrades have been completed for 189 A320 family planes out of the total 338 aircraft as per the data available with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation DGCA till 10 am on November 29The software upgrades on all the affected planes are to be completed by 529 am on November 30DGCA on Saturday issued an Airworthiness Directive to airlines asking Indian operators to immediately carry out the requisite software upgradesThis followed Airbus issuing an alert to operators globally and European Aviation Safety Authority EASA coming out with an Emergency Airworthiness Directive regarding the potential issueIndiGo Air India and Air India Express operate A320 family planes which include A320 ceos and neos A321 ceos and neosThe affected aircraft need software upgrades or hardware realignmentA total of 200 IndiGo planes have been affected and software upgrades have been completed for 143 of them while in the case of Air India 113 aircraft have been impacted and upgrades have been done for 42 of them the DGCA data showedIn the case of Air India Express 25 planes have been impacted and the software upgrades have been completed for 4 of the aircraft as per the data till 10 amThe software upgrades are being undertaken at the bases of the airlines in Delhi Bengaluru Mumbai Chennai Hyderabad Ahmedabad and KolkataIn a post on X at 1013 am Air India said that following EASA and Airbus directives for a mandatory software and hardware realignment on A320 family aircraft our engineers have been working roundtheclock to complete the task at the earliestWe have already completed the reset on over 40 per cent of our aircraft that are impacted by this and are confident of covering the entire fleet within the timeline prescribed by EASA the airline saidAir India also said there have been no cancellations due to this task and there is no major impact on schedule integrity across its networkHowever some of our flights may be slightly delayed or rescheduled it addedOn Friday EASA said Airbus asked airline operators to install a serviceable Elevator Aileron Computer ELAC in the impacted aircraftGenerally ELAC is for flight controlsAirbus on Friday said an analysis of a recent event involving an A320 family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controlsAirbus has consequently identified a significant number of A320 Family aircraft currently inservice which may be impacted it had said in a releaseAirbus had said it acknowledges these recommendations will lead to operational disruptions to passengers and customersThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever