Fears of days of travel chaos across Europe and the world eased on Saturday after plane manufacturer Airbus intervened rapidly to implement a software upgrade it had said was immediately needed on some 6,000 of its A320 planes.

The announcement by Europe's top plane manufacturer late Friday that the planes could not fly again until the switch was made followed an incident in the United States and raised concerns that hundreds of planes would need to be grounded for long periods.

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury acknowledged that the fix "has been causing significant logistical challenges and delays", but added its operators were working around the clock to ensure the required updates "are deployed as swiftly as possible to get planes back in the sky".

"I want to sincerely apologise to our airline customers and passengers who are impacted now. But we consider that nothing is more important than safety," he wrote on Linkedin.

But several leading European airlines said there had been minimal or no cancellations as a result, although there were indications the situation was more problematic in Latin America and Asia.

Over in the US, United Airlines said Saturday's flights were proceeding as normal, while American Airlines said only four aircraft had been grounded.

Airbus had instructed its clients Friday to take "immediate precautionary action" after a technical malfunction on board a JetBlue flight in October exposed that intense solar radiation could corrupt data critical to the flight controls.

The plane suddenly nosedived as it travelled between Cancun in Mexico and Newark in the United States, and pilots had to land in Tampa, Florida. (AFP)