LATEST UPDATES | Airbus recalls half its A320 fleet weeks after pilots briefly lose control in flight

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American Airlines, the world’s largest A320 operator, said it expected the fix to be completed on most of its planes by Saturday, with about two hours required per plane, according to Reuters.

The required software update impacts about 340 of the airline’s 480 A320 aircraft.

Other global airlines, including Germany's Lufthansa and U.K.-based EasyJet, said they would take any impacted planes briefly out of service to do the repairs.

The software change impacts 6,000 A320 jets, representing more than half of the global Airbus fleet, Reuters is reporting.

The setback appears to be one of the largest recalls in the company’s 55 year history.

There are around 11,300 A320 jets in operation in total.

Delta Airlines is expecting that a small portion of its Airbus A320 family fleet will be impacted by the recall.

The update will probably be completed by Saturday morning, a spokesperson said.

"As safety comes before everything else, Delta will fully comply with a directive and expects any resulting operational impact to be limited."

The airline isn’t cancelling any flights at this point.

I just checked the European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s website to see if they have any additional information.

The reason for the recall? A recent incident in which an Airbus A320 airplane "experienced an uncommanded and limited pitch down event,” according to the agency’s advisory.

A pitch down event is when the nose of an airplane points downward.

This comes a few weeks after a JetBlue aircraft flying from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, took a sudden nose dive — without any input from the pilot — after a computer glitch on Oct. 30.

WestJet and Porter, meanwhile, don’t have any A320 aircrafts listed on their websites.

Connecting flights with other airlines could still be delayed by a knock-on effect, as they were during the U.S. Government shutdown earlier this month.

Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer, says the software update needs to be carried out before the next routine flight.

It said in a statement that "intense solar radiation" might be messing with data "critical" to part of the A320 fleet’s flight controls.

Europe-based company Airbus announced on Friday it’s ordering an immediate software change on a significant number of its A320 family of jets, a move that would bring disruption to thousands of jets around the world, Reuters is reporting.

Thus far, American Airlines has said the issue impacts about 340 of its aircraft and that it expects some operational delays.

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