A330/A340 EAD (AoA PROBES)

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Incident: Lufthansa A321 near Bilbao on Nov 5th 2014, loss of 4000 feet of altitude


Incident: Lufthansa A321 near Bilbao on Nov 5th 2014, loss of 4000 feet of altitude

By Simon Hradecky, created Tuesday, Nov 18th 2014 17:11Z, last updated Sunday, Dec 28th 2014 22:22Z

A Lufthansa Airbus A321-200, registration D-AIDP performing flight LH-1829 from Bilbao,SP (Spain) to Munich (Germany) with 109 people on board, was climbing through FL310 out of Bilbao about 15 minutes into the flight at 07:03Z, when the aircraft on autopilot unexpectedly lowered the nose and entered a descent reaching 4000 fpm rate of descent. The flight crew was able to stop the descent at FL270 and continued the flight at FL270, later climbing to FL280, and landed safely in Munich about 110 minutes after the occurrence.

The French BEA reported in their weekly bulletin that the occurrence was rated a serious incident and is being investigated by Germany's BFU.

The occurrence aircraft remained on the ground in Munich for 75 hours before resuming service on Nov 8th.

The Aviation Herald learned that the loss of altitude had been caused by two angle of attack sensors having frozen in their positions during climb at an angle, that caused the fly by wire protection to assume, the aircraft entered a stall while it climbed through FL310. The Alpha Protection activated forcing the aircraft to pitch down, which could not be corrected even by full back stick input. The crew eventually disconnected the related Air Data Units and was able to recover the aircraft.

Following the occurrence EASA released emergency airworthiness directive 2014-0266-E_1 stating:

An occurrence was reported where an Airbus A321 aeroplane encountered a blockage of two Angle Of Attack (AOA) probes during climb, leading to activation of the Alpha Protection (Alpha Prot) while the Mach number increased. The flight crew managed to regain full control and the flight landed uneventfully.

When Alpha Prot is activated due to blocked AOA probes, the flight control laws order a continuous nose down pitch rate that, in a worst case scenario, cannot be stopped with backward sidestick inputs, even in the full backward position. If the Mach number increases during a nose down order, the AOA value of the Alpha Prot will continue to decrease. As a result, the flight control laws will continue to order a nose down pitch rate, even if the speed is above minimum selectable speed, known as VLS.

This condition, if not corrected, could result in loss of control of the aeroplane.

The EASA requires as immediate emergency action that the flight crew operating manuals must be amended with a procedure to keep only one Air Data Reference Unit operative and turning the other two off in following cases:

- the aircraft goes into a continuous nose down pitch movement that can not be stopped by full backward stick deflection
- the Alpha Max (red) strip completely hides the Alpha Prot strip (black/amber) without increase in load factor
- the Alpha Prot strip rapidly changes by more than 30 knots during flight maneouvers with increase in load factor while autopilot is on and speedbrakes are retracted