Some good info starting to come out.
My thoughts: The now confirmed dual flame-out most probably was due to some external factor. These engines are manufactured to such a degree of precision that their performance, and hence response to external factors, would be identical.
An example of this amazing precision is noting that with two (or more
) new engines, such as installed on this aircraft (1 month old), the fuel used for both engines, even after long flights will be the same to the nearest KGs, at the most.
What may have happened is that the engines encountered a particular condition e.g. quantity of water ingestion, at a specific OAT, at a specific power output and direction (i.e. decel/acel), a specific aircraft speed, specific density ALT etc. that could not be handled by the engines.
The incident happened close to an airport, (my assumption since they were in descent), so probably the investigators could even have ground Doppler WX radar records of the event day to establish what the rainfall intensity was at the time.
The fix could be something simple as a FADEC 'tweak' to take into account such conditions and more stringent operational recommendations re: flying in inclement weather.
Well done to Airbus and GE for producing an airframe/engine combination that recovered brilliantly from what could have been a potentially disastrous scenario and not forgetting the crew, who handled it in a way as not to make headline news! Good stuff
