Air travel disruptions loom globally as Airbus recalls planes for modification

European aerospace giant Airbus has warned that flights will be disrupted after it requested immediate modifications to thousands of its A320-family planes.

The move comes after the aircraft makers discovered that intense radiation from the Sun could corrupt data crucial to flight control.

About 6,000 planes are thought to be affected, which makes up about half of Airbus’s global fleet, but it is understood most will be able to undergo a simple software update.

Ibom Air, one of the major airlines operating in Nigeria flies the Airbus A-220-300, which is not a part of the A320-family.

The disruption falls on a major holiday weekend in the US, which is home to four of the biggest A320 model operators: American Airlines, Delta Airlines, JetBlue and United Airlines.

The issue was discovered after a JetBlue aircraft en-route to the United States from Mexico experienced a “sudden drop in altitude” in October.

It’s thought that the incident was caused by interference from intense solar radiation, which corrupted data in a computer which controls the aircraft’s elevation.

Disruption at UK airports has been fairly limited so far, though several airlines around the world have reported cancellations.

A stakeholder in the aviation sector sated that he hopes it won’t be long before Nigerian aviation authorities offer guidance to airlines that fly Airbus.

“Incidentally one suspects the local airlines using Airbus are flying the older machines meaning according to the report they will have to be grounded for retrofitting with hardware, not just a quick software upgrade,” he said.

However, BusinessDay’s investigation show that from current Nigerian fleet data, the only significant Airbus operator in scheduled service is Ibom Air, which flies Airbus A220‑300s (not the affected family); Green Africa, Air Peace, Arik, Overland and United Nigeria focus on Boeing, Embraer, ATR, Bombardier, or regional jets.

Airbus has previously issued or discussed radiation‑related software mitigations mainly in relation to newer fly‑by‑wire families (A320neo, A330neo, A350), so in the Nigerian context, the A220s may not be a relevant type, except the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) advices otherwise.

Ian Getley, Former Qantas captain who holds a PHD in cosmic and solar radiation in aviation, told BBC News that flights can be affected by coronal mass ejections (CME), which is when plasma is ejected from the sun into space.

The higher the severity of the CME, the more likely it is that issues could arise with satellites and aircraft electronics above 28,000 ft (8.5 km), he tell us.

A CME releases heavily charged particles that shoot into the Earth’s atmosphere.

These create more charged particles in the upper atmosphere, which in turn can interfere with aircraft electronics.

The former pilot says his research began after a 2003 flight between LA and New York, where he experienced this phenomenon first hand.