India regulator tells airlines not to fly Airbus A320 family pending modifications

India's Aviation Regulator has instructed airlines on Saturday not to fly Airbus A320 family aircraft until modifications are carried out under the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) directive.

Several airlines said the repairs could cause flight delays or cancellations. Among the carriers affected by the major step, including Air India, Air India Express and Indigo.

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On Friday, Europe's Airbus has ordered immediate repairs to 6,000 of its widely used A320 jets in a sweeping recall affecting more than half the global fleet, threatening upheaval during the busiest travel weekend of the year in the US and sparking disruption worldwide.

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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 3,000 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.

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.

There are around 11,300 A320-family jets in operation, including 6,440 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.