Airlines worldwide work to fix software glitch on A320 aircraft • FRANCE 24 English

Airlines worldwide work to fix software glitch on A320 aircraft • FRANCE 24 English

Joining me now for a deeper dive on this story is Anita Menderata, strategic adviser and aviation expert. Thank you for joining us all the way from Dublin. Anita, people at home might be a bit worried seeing this news given give us a sense of kind of how serious the recall is. Is it a good sign that it’s being taken care of or should be people be concerned that it’s happening at all in the in the first place? Your question is so important and thank you for that. This is something that goes back to the fact that aviation is incredibly powerful when it comes to our imaginations. It inspires us, but when things go wrong, it makes us very frightened whether we’re traveling or not. So, news of Airbus actually putting out the recall notification was incredibly alarming to people. What’s important, however, is putting this in context. The A320 is a beautifully engineered aircraft, and it’s very much about the future of flight. One of the reasons why the industry and airlines per se so enjoy it, it’s 20% less in fuel burn and it’s a brilliant aircraft when it comes to city-tocity hops in a country or in a region. What’s happened is that the recall which was done proactively by Airbus which is a significant announcement for them to make was based on as has already been seen in your report the solar storms that are increasing and the particles therefore that get caught into the systems very very highly sensitive within the operations of the aircraft. that as a result puts into the challenge into the actual system that hits what is called the pitch which is the nose of the aircraft or it actually hits as well the roll which is the left and right. When this happens immediately there’s a notification to the cockpit which then switches off the autopilot and can go into a manual control of the aircraft but that will actually initially feel some turbulence as a result for the entire aircraft and everyone in it. So this does cause concern but Airbus is really taking ownership of this issue to identify the scale of the concern and for those aircraft that can continue to fly giving the all clear for them to do so. Tell us a bit more about these solar storms that have been blamed for the this software malfunction. What are they and and how do they mess with soft software like this? The solar storms are important because other ultimately as we know mother nature is increasing all of the environmental activity. They happen in cycles but when they do happen these solar storms release tiny little particles which go into the computer systems of the operations of the aircraft itself. We know that this is increasing because there’s a lot more flight into polar levels of the aircrafts themselves as aviation increases and the demand for travel and cargo increases. So we know that this is something we need to keep an eye on. Very importantly, the aviation industry globally will never ever ever compete on safety. It will always be safety first. So as an a industry, it is very agnostic in making sure that all of the information, all of the learnings, anything that is discovered is shared across the entire industry, whether it’s Airbus, Boeing, anyone else. because ultimately we rely on these aircraft and it’s the airlines that are now on the front line of managing all of the disappointment and disruption that’s taking place on the ground. But again, it’s keeping it in context. Thankfully, this is just a much smaller issue than was anticipated, but full credit to Airbus for doing a proactive recall to simply check that the software that is being utilized by all the aircraft around the world over 6,000 is functioning correctly. and if it’s not that there’s a roll back on the software taking place. And as these solar storms become more intense, is there a risk they could impact other kinds of software uh not just planes or even kind of the software that that they’ve now updated it to? I think what’s important is that as these storms do indeed increase, equally the aviation industry is looking very carefully. So for instance, working closely with NASA to be able to manage an understanding of what exactly is happening in that solar space and what are the implications. We’ve seen with extreme weather the impact on turbulence. We’ve seen the challenges that are taking place across the world in terms of how the environment is therefore impacting our ability to move. One of the great challenges with what’s happening right now is that it’s one of the busiest travel weekends in the entire year. So if we look at it with Thanksgiving taking place in the US, there are expected 45 to 50,000 flights a day on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. So that’s really escalated the the challenge in being able to allow aircrafts and airlines to find alternative solutions. But there are alternatives including other aircraft and also using partner airlines to keep travelers moving because no aircraft on the ground is functioning in a way that helps anyone and it it’s really about making sure that the aircraft are continuing to move safely. Earlier this year, Airbus overtook Boeing in uh total deliveries. Could this impact its business? It’s definitely had an impact in terms of confidence. There’s no question about that. We know that many of the aircrafts um ultimately their p their customers the airlines themselves are having to make some considerable calculations around keeping people moving and there can be absolutely a recourse on Airbus as a result because ultimately these aircraft are causing airlines to have disruptions at their cost which we know that are is something that isn’t within the agreements between the aircraft manufacturer and the airline in terms of performance and insurance issues. that importantly as well this is also about passenger trust because this is very unnerving when travelers get a sense of might there might be some issue around safety. So this is in the short term going to impact Airbus’s reputation but very importantly it’s about how the leadership then moves forward to be able to resolve it. Again Airbus was proactive in calling out the need for a recall. They’ve been very forthcoming in terms of what exactly is happening with the fix and the CEO Gian Fury has been very good in saying that they’re keeping on top of this. Every single aircraft is being examined for the safety of the software and where roll back is being required. They’re absolutely making sure that that’s mobilized, but it is again a much smaller percentage of the entire fleet than was initially thought. Anita Menderata, thank you so much for for bringing us your expertise and diffusing maybe some of the the panic uh around these recalls.

Airlines around the world reported short-term disruptions heading into the weekend as they fixed software on the widely used A320 family of aircraft. FRANCE 24 speaks to Anita Mendiratta, strategic advisor, author and diplomat specialising in tourism and aviation to better understand the situation.
#aviation #Airbus #A320

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