Irene King: Aviation Commentator discusses global Airbus A320 shutdown

Major disruptions yesterday as airlines around the world had to ground their Airbus A320 aircraft. 

Many travellers were left stranded after Airbus ordered immediate software fixes for 6000 of its A320s. 

Aviation Commentator Irene King says that New Zealand is lucky to be a smaller country, as it means the delays won't last as long. 

'The nice thing about being a small country is that we can recover pretty quickly from these sorts of disruptions.'

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News talksb.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Okay Major disruptions. Yesterday's airlines around the world had to
ground their Airbus A three twenty aircraft. Many travelers were
left stranded after Airbus ordered immediate software fixes the six
thousand of its planes to took us through what this
means I'm doing by aviator commentator Irene King. Good morning, Irene,
good morning. How much of a concern was this in

(00:34):
terms of the disruption? How do you think it's been handled?

Speaker 3 (00:39):
So firstly, let's address the concerns. You know, clearly air
Bus had identified some significant areas where they needed to
upgrade the systems to protect against a situation that they
had identified. So you know, we saw the immediate grounding,

(01:04):
and then of course we got to understand exactly, you know,
what sort of time frame this problem had to be rectified,
and it's quite sort of normal practice and something. Yes,
it's an unusual situation, but airlines are always precautionary and
then they look at well, can we do this, can
we do that? Because that's all driven by absolute desire

(01:29):
to not disrupt their customer, and you know this is
I mean in the US, you can imagine that was
Thanksgiving in that's you peak travel day, and the disruptions
were enormous. The nice thing about being a small country
is that we can recover pretty quickly from these sorts

(01:49):
of disruptions.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Okay, so we've got a New Zealand saying that it's
aircraft will be back in service all at the aircraft
will be back in service by tonight. Do you think
that's that's pretty snappy for what they had to achieve.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know, I think we've got use
to sort of traditional disruptions around the entrance and airframes,
and they tend to be much more prolonged as we're seeing.
You know, it's been sort of like rolling for about
three years now and looks it's going to go for
another two years. But this was clearly, you know, a

(02:22):
fix that could be executed really quickly and with precision.
And I think, you know, that's one of the real
benefits of fly by wire type aircraft.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Because we saw the European Union Aviation Safety Agency they
had their air buses, they continued to fly up to
midnight tonight, and so we take from that that the
risk was relatively low. But then you just you know,
there's that fine line, isn't there between guys. Well, if
the risk is relatively lowd we need to disrupt everybody.
Can we do this in a different way? Can we
do it?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
You know? Exactly? Airlines will always be precautionary, and so
particularly you know, we're quite remote from Airbus and this
was happening, you know, overnight, So we picked up a
scenario of this thing Saturday morning and and you know
it takes it takes a period of time to digest

(03:18):
exactly you know, what the fix is. And so I think,
you know, we will always err on the side of precaution.
You can, you can take that as assured. But then
we see, you know that they are starting to get
on top of the issue and understand how quickly they

(03:40):
can remedy the situation. And so you know, they've put
a deadline of midnight to night and I'm sure there'll
be every effort going into that. Remember, we don't have
a large fleet to to do this work on, which
is you know, real positive. So the messages airlines will

(04:01):
always be precautionary.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Does the US have a good reputation, Yes, they do.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
And this isn't you know, this is you know, we've
had these eCraft around for about twenty five years now
from memory. This is the first time I've heard of
such a significant disruption. And clearly, you know it's identified
to an event that happened a couple of weeks ago,
and so I imagine I've eliminated all other causes of that

(04:32):
event and come down and ed LOCKDAT and drilled down
into the software. Now it's not absolutely certain that it
was the software, but let's be again precautionary, and the
way we address these issues do the fix, and you
know we have a level of assurance that the problem

(04:53):
won't repeat.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Iren King, thanks so much for your time this morning.
Really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
For more from a Sunday session with Francesca Rudken, listen
live to news Talks there'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeart Radio.