Jetstar flights resume after software issue resolved

Jetstar
Jetstar says the software fix has been applied to all affected aircraft. -AAP Image

Jetstar services across Australia have resumed after the carrier was forced to ground dozens of planes due to a global software problem.

The issue led to the cancellation of 90 Jetstar flights in Australia on Saturday, with 34 of 85 of the company's A320/1 aircraft identified to have the anomaly.

Aircraft engineers rushed to fix the issue, which left thousands of Australians stranded at airports around the nation.

Flights resumed on Sunday but flow-on delays have continued to cause "minimal disruption" to some passengers, a Jetstar spokeswoman said.

Engineering teams were deployed to airports primarily on the east coast to reverse a software upgrade on affected planes, Jetstar head of flying operations Tyrone Simes said.

Mr Simes said the repairs took between two to three hours for each aircraft. 

By Sunday afternoon, the required update had been applied to all affected aircraft. 

In a separate technological hitch, a nationwide passport system outage has caused major delays for international travellers arriving at Australian airports.

A "technical issue" affecting the Australian Border Force processing systems prompted chaos across multiple airports nationwide about 1pm on Sunday. 

Long queues and extended wait times were reported for passengers to have their passports processed at Melbourne and Sydney airports.

Australian Border Force has since reported that the system issue had been resolved at those airports.

"We are currently prioritising flights to manage passenger flows," a Melbourne Airport spokesperson told AAP.

More than 6000 aircraft were affected by Saturday's alert, accounting for more than half of Airbus's global A320 family fleet.

The European plane manufacturer ordered immediate precautionary action from operators of a significant number of A320 planes in service after discovering "intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls".

The issue was discovered after a US JetBlue flight made an emergency landing after the plane made a sudden uncommanded drop in altitude on October 30.