Airbus A320 Glitch: Impact on Planes, What We Know

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00:00Betty, let's start off with, we know there was a fault and there was a need for a fix.

00:05How quick of airlines, how easy was it for airlines to get this done?

00:09And do we have a problem this Monday morning?

00:13Well, it does seem like it went fairly smoothly and easily.

00:16So this announcement came out late on Friday evening,

00:19and it really caught everybody off guard, myself included.

00:23And ABBA saying about 6,000 aircraft, as you said,

00:27that's out of more than 11,000, would require this software update.

00:31Essentially not an update, but a revision to the previous version.

00:35What they found was that the current version being used could potentially,

00:39there could be some interference with the flight controls

00:41under the condition of intense solar radiation.

00:45So rather a strange sort of confluence of occurrences, but that was it.

00:51And then over the weekend, the airlines really raced to get that software fix in,

00:56and we heard from everyone from New Zealand to India to Latin America doing this

01:02and doing it swiftly, so it seems, because this morning we got an update from ABBA

01:05saying that, as you said, the very vast majority of these planes are now fixed,

01:10fewer than 100 still requiring an update.

01:14You know, investors looking at this seem a little bit troubled, but not massively spooked.

01:19The stock is down a little bit.

01:20But it really feels like, overall, the company and airlines and travellers,

01:24as an extension, managed to dodge major catastrophe here.

01:29Yeah.

01:30Benny, good morning.

01:31So we were wondering earlier on in the programme if this is the end of a story

01:34or if there's something else about cosmic radiation, solar radiation,

01:37that we need to wonder about, the impact it's having on software during flight.

01:42I mean, software is susceptible to this, and the higher you fly or the higher you are,

01:49the more you are exposed to these small particles that whiz around the air,

01:53to simplify it somewhat.

01:55And obviously airlines try to, aircraft manufacturers try to sort of minimise that

02:00by having robust software, as much redundancy built into that software as they can.

02:05There was an occurrence a month ago with a JetBlue aircraft

02:08where there was sort of a freak input from the computer

02:12without the pilot really taking any action.

02:14And that was really the sort of patient zero that led to what we heard over the weekend.

02:20If anything, it gives you a sense of just how complex software is on an aircraft today,

02:25but also just how seriously the industry takes this whenever there is a scare,

02:30rather, you know, ground thousands of aircraft than sort of risk flying

02:35and then having something catastrophic happen.

02:38I spoke a moment ago, 6,000 out of a fleet of 11,000,

02:43not just a fleet of 6,000.

02:45This is a huge number of aircraft, Benny, that are being affected by this.

02:49This is a huge fleet that is affected by this.

02:53Yet Airbus seems to, as you say, manage this reasonably quickly.

02:56Therefore, my next question is, does this impact what is going on at Airbus

03:01in Toulouse, in Hamburg, and all the other kind of final assembly lines that they have?

03:06Are we going to be able to hit targets by year end?

03:08Obviously, there's usually a race to hit targets by year end.

03:11What do we know about how this impacts kind of day-to-day operations at Airbus?

03:17I mean, it's too soon to say at this point.

03:19I would have said if this had dragged out into the week and the month,

03:24probably the answer would be yes, this will have an impact on their targets.

03:28This is a crucial month for Airbus,

03:30and they always managed to miraculously build huge amounts of planes

03:33in the last couple of weeks, and they have some ways to go.

03:36The target is for 820 planes to be delivered throughout the year,

03:41and as I said, they have some ways to go.

03:43But they think they can make it.

03:44Now, if engineers, if management had suddenly found themselves

03:48dealing with this sort of cosmic interference,

03:50that would have changed the game.

03:52But given that they've come out of this fairly swiftly,

03:55or actually very swiftly,

03:57and have managed to really sidestep the issue,

04:00I would bet that this is sort of a ghost in the machine, as you want,

04:04and really that it's over, by and large,

04:07and that they are now able to focus on the day-to-day operations again,

04:11which in no small part is that target that they have for the end of the year.

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