The move, announced in Friday, threatens upheaval during the busiest travel weekend of the year in the United States and sparking disruption worldwide.
The setback appears to be among the largest recalls affecting Airbus in its 55-year history and comes weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered model. At the time Airbus issued its bulletin to the plane's more than 350 operators, some 3000 A320-family jets were in the air.
The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple, but must be carried out before the planes can fly again, other than repositioning to repair centres, according to the bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters.
Numerous airlines from the US to South America, Europe and India said late on Friday the repairs could potentially cause flight delays or cancellations.
The world's largest A320 operator, American Airlines , said some 340 of its 480 A320 aircraft would need the fix. It said it mostly expected these to be completed by Saturday with about two hours required for each plane.
Other airlines said they would take planes briefly out of service to do the repairs, including Germany's Lufthansa , India's IndiGo, and UK-based easyJet.
Colombian carrier Avianca said the recall affected more than 70 per cent of its fleet, seen at around 100 jets, causing significant disruption over the next 10 days and prompting the airline to close ticket sales for travel dates through December 8.
There are around 11,300 A320-family jets in operation, including 6440 of the core A320 model, which first flew in 1987. Four of the world's 10 biggest A320-family operators are major US airlines: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue and United Airlines. Chinese, European and Indian carriers are also among the jet's biggest customers.
For about two-thirds of the affected jets, the recall will theoretically result in a brief grounding as airlines revert to a previous software version, industry sources said.
Airbus said a recent incident involving an A320-family aircraft had revealed that solar flares may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.
Industry sources said the incident that triggered the unexpected repair action involved a JetBlue flight from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, on October 30, in which several passengers were hurt following a sharp loss of altitude.
That flight made an emergency landing at Tampa, Florida, after a flight control problem and a sudden uncommanded drop in altitude, prompting a Federal Aviation Administration investigation.
JetBlue and the FAA had no comment.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency late on Friday issued an emergency directive mandating the fix.
An Airbus spokesperson estimated the repairs would affect some 6000 jets in total, mixed between several variants, confirming an earlier Reuters report.
18°C