Source: Radio New Zealand
123RF
The Airbus A320 fault sparked worldwide delays and airport chaos, and has renewed fears over aviation safety in a turbulent 2025.
The Airbus A320 has long been considered the workhorse of global aviation, reliably taking tens of thousands of passengers to their destinations every week.
So, when a software glitch in the aircraft’s flight-control system, detected in late October, was brought to global attention this week, the shockwaves were immediate.
Within hours, major airlines – including Air New Zealand – grounded sections of their fleets, departure boards flickered with cancelled and delayed alerts, and passengers scrambled for information.
And as they sought answers, their news feeds were interrupted by more aviation breaking news – two planes in Sydney had collided mid-air, killing a pilot.
This follows other major plane crashes this year, including the Air India crash that killed 260; the mid-air collision between an American Eagle plane and military helicopter over the Potomac River, killing 67; the cargo plane crash in Kentucky, when the plane exploded in a massive fireball, killing 14; and the Lanhsa British Aerospace Jetstream which crashed into the sea shortly after taking off in Honduras, killing 12.
Aviation commentator Grant Bradley tells The Detail, it’s been a “bumpy year” for the industry and “looking to Christmas, buckle up and hope for the best”.
“Whenever there’s an air crash, it does give passengers and the industry pause for thought,” says Bradley. “They are always looking for reasons why… but these are completely different accidents, it’s hard to see a trend here.”
He says that while there are no known links between the crashes, the cause of the Airbus A320 software glitch has been revealed.
The problem identified relates to a piece of computing software that calculates the plane’s elevation.
Airbus discovered that, at high altitudes, its data could be corrupted by intense radiation, released periodically by the Sun.
In late October, this led to the incident in which an aircraft suddenly lost altitude over America.
‘You’e got to be unlucky to be in an air crash’
Travel commentator and writer Daniel Lake tells The Detail it would have been terrifying.
“It would have been even scarier if you were in the cockpit because the plane nose-dived without any input from the pilots, so you are sitting there, cruising, normal flight, and suddenly the plane is headed for the ocean, and you’ve touched nothing,” Lake says.
“Luckily, they could regain control and fix things in just a few seconds, but within those few seconds, passengers who weren’t strapped in had hit the ceiling and had been injured… some of those people probably won’t fly again.”
Both he and Bradley say that now that the problem has been fixed, it shouldn’t occur again. And they stress, air travel is still safe.
“As aircraft have become more heavily automated, you’ve seen a corresponding improvement in aviation safety,” Bradley says. “An MIT study last year calculated that the risk of being in a fatal airline crash is between one in 11 million and one in 13 million, and that compares to the risk of being in a car crash of one in 5,000 internationally.
“So, you have got to be pretty unlucky to be in an air crash.”
Lake agrees, saying “there’s been plenty of high-profile crashes and we see them more and more on our screens, but it’s important to remember that flying is by far the safest way to travel.”
Regardless, he says some people will still delay travel.
“I definitely think there are more people who are anxious about flying, so people who are already susceptible to being anxious are even more anxious… and people are asking me ‘is flying safe?’.
He says 2025 may be remembered as the year confidence cracked, not because flying became dramatically less safe, but because the public perception of safety shifted.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
