Aviation commentator Irene King. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
King said many flight issues had an obvious explanation but the Cancun-Newark flight did not fall into that category.<\/p>\n
\u201dAnything that\u2019s an uncontrolled command to the aircraft \u2013 it is something that\u2019s going to immediately grab your attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like your computer shutting down and you haven\u2019t done anything.\u201d <\/p>\n
King says she understands the aircraft plunged \u201cquite severely\u201d and that people were injured.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously they\u2019ve been doing an intensive investigation and they\u2019ve worked out that there was a software glitch. I guess from that perspective that\u2019s why this is garnering a lot of interest \u2013 plus of course the sheer volume of the disruption.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, Airbus announced a software update was required for A320 aircraft due to the discovery of a vulnerability to \u201cintense solar radiation\u201d \u2013 referring to a solar flare incident believed to have impacted the US flight.<\/p>\n
The software update would take several hours in most cases, but for other planes the work would be more involved, AP reported.<\/p>\n
About 6000 planes were thought to be affected globally, with Airbus saying in its statement that it was aware its precautionary notice would \u201clead to operational disruptions to passengers and customers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of passengers have been caught up in significant delays across New Zealand, some by 24 hours. Air New Zealand has warned further delays are likely.<\/p>\n
An Air New Zealand Airbus. Photo \/ 123RF<\/p>\n
King believes the global impact will take its toll on Airbus\u2019 reputation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t put it in the black swan category, but my God this swan has certainly turned grey,\u201d said King.<\/p>\n
King believes Airbus will have its best aviation engineers working on the fix.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have to be very clear about … do they have the problem quantified, identified, and the fix absolutely nailed down?<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it just a bug or is it an infection, you know? Those are the things that start to go through the minds of airline executives.\u201d<\/p>\n
The respected aviation commentator says she is reminded of the Y2K panic of 25 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you\u2019re thinking, well, how the hell do they not know about this?<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it seems like there has been quite a lot of chatter around the impact of all of these solar flares potentially on aviation. And now we\u2019re starting to see the potential becoming an actual.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it is still safe to fly despite the chaos that has been caused by the Airbus warning. The CAA describes the systems maintenance as \u201ca precautionary software update\u201d and says it does not present an immediate safety risk to flights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aviation commentator Irene King. Photo \/ Michael Craig King said many flight issues had an obvious explanation but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[104654,105141,6776,15408,95,105140,15033,12413,11539,7123,16492,62380,1437,42,13620,43,1536,90,1519,3057,40,38,41,39,19347],"class_list":["post-159578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-a320","tag-a360","tag-airbus","tag-almost","tag-and","tag-assesses","tag-aviation","tag-chaos","tag-commentator","tag-current","tag-delays","tag-glitch","tag-global","tag-headlines","tag-leading","tag-news","tag-next","tag-on","tag-risks","tag-steps","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-unprecedented"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}