sweker
Much more familiar with the NG than A319, but is it likely that the 'severe' turbulence caused the AutoPilot to disconnect, requiring manual intervention from the PF?
and
407 Driver
In my humble opinion...it seems as if there is more information pointing to a massive comuter glitch over any turbulence issue?
Encountering severe turbulence on an 319 might cause the autopilot to disengage and the aircraft to revert to the so called 'Abnormal Attitude Law' (this is by design, althought turbulence must be really extreme for this to happen).
The Abnormal Attitude Law is 'direct control' with G-load protection. When control is regained, the aircraft reverts to 'alternate law', i.e.
- Roll is 'direct'
- Yaw is 'alternate'
- Pitch is 'alternate'
and stays in this condition until landing. And as far as I remember, autopilot is n/a, and a manual landing is mandatory when in Alternate Law.
Maybe this was the reason, why the crew was flying manually.
So, if this happenend, than there was no computer failure - the system worked as designed. But let's just wait for the report to be published in a couple of weeks.
Regards,
DBate
P.S. It's been a while since I flew an aircraft from the A320 family, so any current pilot who cares to correct me - go ahead.
eagle21 beat me by a couple of minutes with his post 