Today’s modern airliners are so highly automated and operated by computers, especially the Airbus 320 and its sisters, that a lot of times a problem can be corrected, but the fault code is still showing or has not been cleared from the system, this takes a mechanic to do, so they have to go back into the system to clear the fault code out.

Airplanes now transmit back to the main base via a ground station or satellite every minute or so the performance data and any fault codes that pop up, so the maintenance base knows at almost the same time that pilots notice the problem, if it is not safety related, the pilots might not even be aware of the problem so as not to distract them from their flight duties..

I am not familiar with the Airbus airplanes, so I don’t know the actual specifics of how their computer systems work, but the Airbus is a fly by wire airplane totally controlled by computers, there is no mechanical linkage between the pilots flight controls and the airplanes flight controls, unlike the B-737 which still is mechanically controlled with computers assisting the operation of the airplane.

Mr. Elliott