This Weekend’s Urgent Airbus A320 Computer Fix Barely Dented Most Airlines — JetBlue Turned It Into A Crisis Of Cancellations

by Gary Leff

Airbus narrowbody aircraft worldwide needed an urgent computer fix. Thousands of planes worldwide were rushed for software maintenance.

The Elevator Aileron Computers (ELACs) on the A320 family had a bad software load that could be corrupted by solar radiation, which in rare cases can drive uncommanded control inputs (nose-down) and create a structural-load risk.

This followed an incident on a JetBlue A320 on October 30th where a Cancun to Newark flight pitched down on its own. Pilots diverted to Tampa and about 15 passengers were hospitalized after the aircraft rapidly descended without being instructed by pilots to do so.

  • Airbus had rolled out a new ELAC software standard (often referred to as L104, on ELAC B L104 computers).

  • Investigation showed that intense solar radiation could corrupt data inside the ELAC running that software load, leading to wrong control-law outputs.

  • EASA issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive on Nov 28, 2025, and the FAA followed.

Before next flight, affected aircraft either needed a roll back to the earlier good software, or to replace the ELAC computers. About 900 older aircraft needed the hardware swapped, not just a software rollback.

Generally U.S. airlines got this done quickly where needed. U.S. airlines, except JetBlue.

  • JetBlue led the world in cancellations on Sunday, with 166 flights (16% of its operation). By contrast, American Airlines cancelled 1%.
  • Cancellations will certainly continue Monday.

Aviation watchdog JonNYC shares what’s going on. Many of JetBlue’s A320s need to have the computer removed, not just updating or rolling back software loads. And that means sourcing computers “from around the world.” They have computers inbound today and tomorrow – at least “a large number of them” – but perhaps not all that they need.

Jon as usual has the scoop from internal airline comms.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. JetBlue should’ve ideally been able to get an FAA waiver for this. Ironically, American wasn’t as badly affected because they didn’t keep many of their planes up to date with the latest software whereas JetBlue was up to date and now has to downgrade.

  4. If they had to get computer hardware, why is this a problem due to Jetblue?
    More like Airbus caused JetBlue to cancel flights?
    Clickbait Gary

  5. JetBlue is in a perpetual crisis of cancellations and delays. Ever since that snowstorm in February 2007. B6 can’t run a clean operation in clear skies.

  6. The headline suggested JetBlue did something to make the problem worse; broken ops, bad scheduling, lack of a mission statement, failure to eat at Ben’s Chili Bowl, whatever.

    But the body of the post indicates it’s due to a hardware issue and JetBlue is scrounging proper hardware from around the planet.

    Gary, bad headline. Maybe have that AI you use so much dial down on the clickbait!

  7. Seems to me thatJetBlue did an outstanding effort as some 40% of their fleet are A320s, but A320s are less than 5% of the AA fleet.

  8. A software glich that caused a class of aircraft to pitch down uncontrolled until caught by JetBlue pilots. Like the 737 Max MCAS issue, which did the same, but was not caught in time by turning off the unit by pilots on two flights that crashed.

    The events cost Boeing $18 billion while Airbus gets by with a “oh gosh, a software and hardware update issue.”

  9. @shoeguy

    JetBlue has a decent amount of blame for their bad on-time record, but a lot of it is not their fault. They have a higher proportion of their flights leaving or going into areas that get screwed with bad weather like BOS and JFK.

    As for this incident, JetBlue is not at fault. American’s affected planes were not all updated to the latest software, which is why it took a lot less time. JetBlue’s planes were all updated to the latest software and since most of the A320ceos also need a hardware change, it made things significantly longer.

  10. @VK,
    You keep saying that AA didn’t update the software. What about DL or UA or F9? You don’t know a dang thing about what you are spewing. It’s not like, oh I’ll do the iPhone update later. The software is always distributed, and updated per the manufacturer. Otherwise the aircraft wouldn’t be airworthy.

    I get it you’re a B6 fan boy, but you have no idea what you’re talking about. Also B6 is an operational train wreck.

  11. @Tom Mariner — Your attempted false equivalence above is absurd.

    346 people died in the two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes that occurred in October 2018 and March 2019. The crashes, Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, were linked to a faulty flight control system and led to the worldwide grounding of the aircraft for nearly two years.

    This Airbus hiccup is nothing like Boeing’s catastrophic blunders on the Max. Nice try.

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