We had the hold bug on our Airbuses last year. A lot of our guys had to write ASAP reports for straying outside of the protected area. It got fixed on the next month FMS update cycle.

Having been on the test side I can tell you that software engineers often place bugs in the software so they can come back and get paid to fix them later on. It's kind of a job protection program for software engineers.

A good test team would be aware of that and catch it way before it makes it to the real airplane. Don't count on the FAA, they are basically a rubber-stamp agency.

The Airbus is always full of surprises.

FT