Airbus chief Guillaume Faury has highlighted the huge international effort in recent days to check thousands of A320-family aircraft around the world for potential flight-control software malfunction. "We have been very busy over the weekend with our airline customers [and] regulators," Faury said at a conference held by the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD) on 2 December. "I want to commend the EASA leadership in this situation. We have to stay very humble, because it was a safety concern. We had to deal with it." On 28 November, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued an emergency airworthiness directive (AD) mandating operators of A319s, A320s and A321s to immediately roll back a software update for the aircraft's elevator aileron computer and revert to a previous configuration, because the update was found to be susceptible to potential malfunction in locations with intense solar radiation. Faury cites an incident with a JetBlue A320, in which that aircraft pitched down at altitude, as the prompt for EASA's directive. The European AD was followed by similar action by the US Federal Aviation Administration. Airbus estimates that 6,000 A320-family aircraft were affected by the ADs. "The decision [to intervene] and the way that was executed was probably better than expected, thanks to the mobilisation of a lot of people around the world in a few days," Faury acknowledges. The event was a reminder that "planes flying in the air are something we have to be very mindful of, and that safety is a day-to-day, minute-by-minute concern," he says. "There's probably a lot of learnings that we need to take from this event. Safety has been managed, that was the top priority. I just like to stay very humble with that situation. We don't want to face those situations again."

Airbus has identified a quality issue with metal panels on a limited number of A320 family aircraft. "As it always does when faced with quality issues in its supply chain, Airbus is taking a conservative approach and is inspecting all aircraft potentially impacted – knowing that only a portion of them will need further action to be taken," "The source of the issue has been identified, contained and all newly produced panels conform to all requirements." Airbus did not say how many aircraft were affected, however Reuters reports that around 50 jets were affected, including some that have yet to be delivered. The confirmation comes days after the European Aviation Safety Agency on 28 November grounded thousands of A320-family aircraft for implementation of an urgent software change to their elevator aileron computers. As of 1 December, the number of aircraft affected by that grounding was less than 100, with those expected to be released back to service once software updates were implemented.

Airbus says that there are less than 100 A320 family aircraft globally that require modification before they can return to service after an emergency airworthiness directive issued on 28 November that required an urgent rollback of some flight control software to deal with the potential for it to malfunction during flight. In a statement issued on 1 December, the manufacturer says that out of around 6,000 aircraft that may have been grounded because of the AD, "the vast majority have now received the necessary modifications" to the software on their elevator aileron computers (ELACs). "We are working with our airline customers to support the modification of less than 100 remaining aircraft to ensure they can be returned to service," it adds. The groundings came through a European Union Aviation Safety Agency emergency AD in the evening of 28 November, European time, that warned the latest version of the ELAC software for A319, A320 and A321s of all serial numbers was vulnerable to malfunction during intense solar radiation, potentially causing issues with the flight controls. The AD called for operators with affected computers to replace or modify them before the next flight, largely by rolling back to a previous version of the software in accordance with an earlier operator bulletin from Airbus. Lufthansa says that it began implementing the measures on 28 November and most updated were completed over that evening and on the morning of 29 November. Despite earlier warning of delays and cancellations, as of 29 November it said that no Lufthansa Group airline flights were expected to be cancelled, but there may be minor delays. The grounding could have impacted travel in the US over the busy Thanksgiving holiday period, but most A320 operators there appear to have managed the situation without major incident. JetBlue Airways said on 30 November that it expects to complete the required software updates on its fleet on 1 December. Cirium fleets data shows that it has 221 A320ceos, A321ceos and A321neos in service, plus 11 more A320 family jets in storage. Avianca, which had paused sales on all tickets for travel up to 7 December, said on 29 October that "51% of the A320 fleet has its software fully updated and it is expected that the work of the specialised technicians can be completed in the coming days". Nonetheless, it is continuing its sales pause on tickets for travel up to 8 December. VietJet says that as of the early hours of 30 November that it had completed update on all 69 of its affected A320s and A321s "nearly four hours ahead of the deadline set by aviation authorities and Airbus". AirAsia says that it was able to complete compliance work on all its aircraft within 24 hours across its operations in Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia. Jetstar said on 30 November that it had applied the update to all affected aircraft but warned that there may still be flow-on impacts to its schedule.