Sydney, Melbourne airports affected by global recall of Airbus planes
A global recall of Airbus planes has led to delays at Australian airports after the aviation giant flagged a software glitch overnight.
Sydney and Melbourne Airports have confirmed that Jetstar’s fleet of A320 aircraft has been affected by the outage, causing delays to some of the budget carrier’s services operating at both airports.
An Airbus SE A320 aircraft operated by Qantas’ low-cost unit Jetstar.Credit: Bloomberg
Jetstar said in a statement early Saturday morning that “some of our flights operated by Airbus are unable to take off at this stage. We are working on the impacts on our fleet and customers. We will do more shortly.”
Sydney Airport said it “supports Jetstar as they work to resolve the issue and strongly advises all Jetstar customers to check their flight status with the airline before traveling to the airport.”
Cebu Pacific, which flies to the Philippines from Sydney and Melbourne, is also affected by the Airbus order.
“Our operations and engineering teams are working diligently to complete updates as quickly and efficiently as possible,” the airline said on X. “We have also deployed additional airport staff to assist passengers.”
Cebu Pacific urges passengers traveling in the next 48 hours to check the status of their flights on its website “before heading to the airport.”
Earlier, Airbus released a statement saying, “A recent incident involving A320 Family aircraft revealed that intense solar radiation can corrupt data critical to the operation of flight controls.”
No details were given as to what this incident was, but Airbus said it had subsequently identified a “significant number” of aircraft that may have been affected.
