Authors: Tim Heffer, Alison Lambert and David Shepherdson
PARIS, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Airbus received a brutal reminder this week that even the world’s most-delivered jet – the A320 – is not immune to shocks as diverse as solar flares and defective metal.
Days after recalling 6,000 A320 family aircraft due to a software glitch linked to cosmic radiation, the European giant was forced to slash delivery targets due to defects in some fuselage panels.
The two setbacks – one stemming from astrophysics, the other from basic metallurgy – underscore how fragile success can be for a plane maker that dominates the busiest segment of the aviation industry and is on track to overtake Boeing for the seventh consecutive year.
“When we leave one thing behind, we hit another,” Chief Executive Guillaume Faury told Reuters as he weighed how many aircraft could be affected by the panel thickness issue.
“Icarus Error”
In a surprise move, Airbus on Friday issued instructions to airlines to revert to a previous version of the software that controls computer nose angles on some aircraft. A few weeks ago, a JetBlue A320 tilted downward, injuring about 12 people on board.
The company blames the problem on vulnerability to solar flares, which could theoretically cause the plane to pitch downward — a collision with the sun reminiscent of Greek mythology, when airlines were scrambling to fix a flaw nicknamed the “Icarus Error.”
The rollback came faster than expected, but within days Airbus encountered a more humdrum problem that threatened to shorten the year-end rush for aircraft deliveries: the discovery of a defective fuselage panel.
The glitch, first reported by Reuters on Monday, led to a sharp sell-off in the company’s shares as investors pondered how the company would meet its already precarious delivery targets for this year.
Within 48 hours, Airbus had slashed its target by 4% and confirmed on Friday that deliveries had slowed in November.
The two unrelated setbacks come just weeks after the A320 family, which includes the best-selling A321, surpassed the recently troubled Boeing 737 MAX to become the most-delivered airliner in history.
“Airbus is all about the A321 right now,” said Agency Partners analyst Sash Tusa. “The extreme focus on a single model has both advantages and disadvantages.”
The broader A320 mid-range family accounts for most of Airbus’ sales and “the vast majority” of profits, he said, adding that there were inconsistencies between Airbus lowering delivery targets and maintaining financial forecasts.
Airbus shares have fallen about 3% this week, after falling as much as 11% on Monday.
Vendor and software challenges
By the end of the week, Airbus was facing pressure from official investigators to provide more data on the software grounding, as well as resistance from some airlines unwilling to accept deliveries without new assurances on affected airframe parts, sources said.
It also faces lingering issues with its supply chain.
Airbus has been at odds with some suppliers over plans to boost production to meet strong demand for air travel. Unions and suppliers said quality issues such as panel problems at Spanish suppliers highlighted the plight of some suppliers.
Airbus said the industrial defect was not a safety issue. The company has previously said supply chains are generally improving after being disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
In particular, the airframe failure highlights concerns about one of the weakest parts of the industry: aerostructures companies that make parts that are never replaced, cutting them off from other companies’ lucrative spare parts sales.
Insiders said Airbus’s week-long crisis began in a tense atmosphere on Thursday, after Airbus and Air France entered an appeals trial over corporate manslaughter in the 2009 A330 crash, charges that both sides strongly deny.
Engineers investigating the JetBlue incident have just concluded that a software update designed to make A320s more difficult to stall even if their normal defenses were accidentally disabled – echoing what happened with an AF447 – may have removed the backup layer of protection used to correct for solar interference.
But because the cosmic particles left no trace, Airbus’ findings on JetBlue were hypothetical and without evidence, prompting the decision to make a precautionary recall, sources said.
“We’re used to this in space, it’s not unusual,” Faury said. “We found a vulnerability in the software on that computer, so we had to address it.”
Experts say the incident is a reminder that aviation is bombarded by Earth’s rays from deep space or from the sun, an issue raised in a landmark 1995 Boeing/IBM study but increasingly important as modern jets use more electronic chips.
“This is an alarm… The international community needs to come together to ensure that we learn more about this phenomenon,” said George Danos, chairman of the Cyprus Space Exploration Organization and an expert on cosmic radiation.
(Reporting by Tim Heffer, Allison Lambert, David Shepherdson and Michelle Campas; Editing by Joe Bullock)