CONF iture;
It seems that the ENG THR LEVER FAULT is a ECAM procedure but not a QRH one.
Thanks - I was reading the abnormal from the FCOM and in my mind substituted/typed "QRH" - its in the paper version of the ECAM drills and does show up on the ECAM.
Is it also possible that an engine frozen at a level of power won't trigger any kind of ECAM message
Well I think that depends upon the failure. As you know from your A320 FCOM/Vol.1/Abnormals/Power Plant there are many
ENG abnormals; a few of them, such as the example offered, will freeze or limit thrust and yes, that would be, through the FWC, announced on the lower ECAM, and,
... the crew would have to improvise !?
This isn't an irrational airplane no more than we can say that the B777/B767/A310/MD11 are. Designers and engineers of software and hardware are good at what they do. The airplane isn't perfect but no airplane is, and if something is broken or the airplane is abused beyond its certification limits it will behave just as any engineered system would, within the laws of physics. So....engine thrust isn't frozen/limited without cause; just as the airplane is handed over to humans when it no longer has sufficient information upon which to guide/limit its flight, it is almost always because FADEC does not have sufficient information to govern/provide engine thrust. THR LK is another message which comes on in Alphaprot and requires active flight crew intervention.
All that said,
it is an airplane and we are pilots. Where demanded by rare circumstances such as unanticipated/unwritten failures, flight crews can and clearly do, improvise; I suspect the guys who landed the JetBlue A320 with the cocked nosewheel 'improvised' because there is no ECAM for "Cocked Nosewheel". The QRH drill for dual engine failure is long but I suspect Sully and his F/O had to improvise in the three-plus minutes they had to ditch. In response to warnings, (which we later found out were false), with maintenance concurrence I have had to improvise in an A330 in order to prevent a far more serious situation from unfolding. So it can occur and improvisation, with knowledge/experience, may be required; this is aviation, after all, not a UAV...yet. In our case it was absolutely not due to the design of the warnings or engines or the airplane.
With regard to the ENG THR LEVER FAULT and the ENG THR LEVER DISAGREE the drill was either autoland the airplane or shut the engine down at 500ftRA because the moment the autopilot was disconnected the engine thrust would be commanded as if the thrust lever were in the CLB position, (depending of course, when the failure occurred). That is now changed and one does not need to autoland the airplane but must use the autothrust. It used to be a simulator favourite...
regards,
PJ2