Pakistan International Airlines remained unaffected even as global airlines scrambled on Saturday to fix a software glitch on their Airbus A320 jets after a recall by the European planemaker temporarily grounded aircraft in Asia and Europe and threatened travel in the United States during the busiest weekend of the year.
The recall of 6,000 planes, covering more than half of Airbus’ global A320-family fleet, is among the broadest in its 55-year history and is a blow for the planemaker weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered model.
“PIA has confirmed that its entire A320 fleet is not affected by this Airbus alert. PIA’s Engineering and Maintenance department is closely monitoring their fleet’s airworthiness, ensuring safe operations,” said a statement by the airlines spokesperson issued today.
Meanwhile, airlines worked through the night to make fixes after Airbus issued the emergency recall to 350 operators around the world, and global regulators directed carriers to remedy the software problem before resuming flights. That appeared to help head off the worst-case scenario and capped the number of flight delays in Asia and Europe early on Saturday. The US will face high travel demand later in the day after the Thanksgiving holiday period.
“It’s not as chaotic as some people might think,” said Asia-based independent aviation analyst Brendan Sobie, adding that airlines were always prepared for various potential disruptions. “But it does create some short-term headaches for operations.”
Airbus is also now telling airlines that emergency repairs to some of the A320 jets affected may be less burdensome than first thought, industry sources said, with fewer than feared likely to need hardware changes rather than the software fix. Even so, industry executives said the abrupt action was a rare and potentially costly headache at a time when maintenance is under pressure worldwide from labour and parts shortages.