Airlines around the world have been forced to ground thousands of Airbus planes following the discovery of a software problem which may have contributed to a sudden drop in the altitude of a plane last month, injuring 15 people.
Around 6,000 A320 planes are thought to be affected, delaying and cancelling flights over the weekend. Airbus said on Friday that an examination of the JetBlue incident revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls on the A320 family of aircraft. The issue was caused by a software update to the aircraft’s onboard computers, the EU agency said.