ISTANBUL – As part of the global Airbus recall on most of their a320 aircrafts, one of the most widely used passenger planes in use, the ITA Airways plane Pope Leo is using during his trip to Turkey and Lebanon had to undergo a technical fix before departing for Beirut.

On Saturday the Airbus airline company announced that it was grounding some 6,000 planes for modifications of monitors related to a risk of solar flares on Thanksgiving weekend – one of the most highly trafficked weekends of the year.

It also coincided with Pope Leo’s Nov. 27 – Dec. 2 visit to Turkey and Lebanon.

The announcement was made the night before Leo is due to fly from Istanbul to Beirut for the last leg of his two-nation journey, the first international trip of his papacy.

Airbus made the decision after discovering that computers installed on most of the A320 aircraft it operates are potentially vulnerable to interference from the sun.

The issue was first detected in October, when a JetBlue aircraft flying from Mexico to the United States experienced what was described as a “sudden drop in altitude.” The incident was thought to have been caused by interference from solar radiation that corrupted data in a computer that controls the aircraft’s elevation.

A Vatican spokesman told journalists Saturday that a monitor was being flown into Istanbul from Rome, to be installed in the pope’s ITA Airways A320 craft prior to its departure for Lebanon Sunday.

The part, along with the technician installing it, apparently arrived in Istanbul around 3:30p.m. local time, with the goal of completing the work before midnight.

The Vatican spokesman said the technician finished installing the monitor around 6p.m. local time in Istanbul, clearing the pope to fly to Lebanon as planned Sunday afternoon.

After praying at the Armenian Cathedral in Istanbul Sunday morning, the pope will pray the Divine Liturgy at the Orthodox patriarchal cathedral of Saint George and have a private lunch with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I before departing from Ataturk Airport around 2:45p.m.

He is scheduled to land in Beirut at 3:45p.m. local time, after a roughly two-hour flight, after which he will meet privately with Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president of the National Assembly, and Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.

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