AirAsia Aviation Group, one of Airbus’ largest customers of single-aisle jets, says testing protocols for aircraft software need to be re-examined in the wake of the weekend glitch that required an urgent update.
Tony Fernandes, the founder of the Southeast Asian carrier, said it was likely the software was not thoroughly tested.
“It seems a bit bizarre, it is something it has to look at, it’s obvious it wasn’t tested,” Fernandes said in an interview on Tuesday. “I’m not an expert but it failed at that height. They have to make sure they get the experts or checks.”
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Airbus has largely dealt with the brief fallout and disruption from the software glitch, which stemmed from the potential risk for solar radiation to corrupt computer data that helps maintain flight controls. However, the European planemaker’s top-selling aircraft faced a new issue on Monday, with revelations of quality issues on some fuselage panels.
Fernandes said AirAsia was not affected by the fuselage issues and also suffered “negligible” impact from the need to roll back software updates on 96 of its more than 210 single-aisle aircraft.
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The software incident was a “good warning” to the industry at large to ensure it has its priorities right, given the challenge of delivering more planes and meeting financial targets, he said.