PARIS: Fears of days of travel chaos across Europe and the world eased on Saturday after plane manufacturer Airbus intervened rapidly to implement a software upgrade it had said was immediately needed on some 6,000 of its A320 planes.
The announcement by Europe’s top plane manufacturer late Friday that the planes could not fly again until the switch was made followed an incident in the United States and raised concerns that hundreds of planes would need to be grounded for long periods.
But several leading European airlines said there had been minimal or no cancelations as a result, although there were indications the situation was more problematic in Latin America and Asia.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury acknowledged that the fix “has been causing significant logistical challenges and delays” but added its operators were working around the clock to ensure the required updates “are deployed as swiftly as possible to get planes back in the sky.”
“I want to sincerely apologize to our airline customers and passengers who are impacted now. But we consider that nothing is more important than safety,” he wrote on Linkedin.
