AirAsia founder urges Airbus to re-look software tests

[HONG KONG/SINGAPORE] AirAsia, one of Airbus’ largest customers of single-aisle jets, says testing protocols for the 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 South-east Asian carrier, said it was likely that the software was not thoroughly tested.

“It seems a bit bizarre, it is something [that Airbus] has to look at. It’s obvious it wasn’t tested,” Fernandes said in an interview on Tuesday (Dec 2). “I’m not an expert, but it failed at that height. They have to make sure they get the experts or checks.” 

Airbus has largely dealt with the brief fallout and disruption from the software glitch, which stemmed from the potential risk of solar radiation corrupting 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 that AirAsia was not affected by the fuselage issues, and also suffered “negligible” effects from the need to roll back software updates on 96 of its more than 210 single-aisle aircraft.

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 and more planes and meeting financial targets, he said. 

Planemakers should “take a step back and make sure you can handle this ramp-up, make sure you test software properly, don’t rush”, Fernandes said in a separate interview with Bloomberg Television.

“The pressures of quarterly results, sometimes the pressures of competition, probably [results in] the quality [dropping] a little bit.”

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The Toulouse, France-based Airbus is racing to meet its annual delivery goal of 820 aircraft.

Airbus delivered about 70 planes in November, sources said, leaving the company needing to hand over about 165 planes in December, which would mark a record.

Airbus was contacted for comment.

AirAsia operates around 240 mostly single-aisle jets and has orders for almost 400 more Airbus aircraft. On top of that, the budget carrier in July tentatively agreed to buy up to 70 extra-long range single-aisle jets.

The company is planning a further order of 150 regional jets and is deciding among Airbus, Embraer or Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China. Fernandes said that this latest planned order is still months away, while engine choices could sway its final decision. BLOOMBERG