Retard Retard

[punkalouver]

Of course the Airbus likes to say the title of this thread in the flare but it appears that the ECAM said it twice for this aircraft on the same day......

" an Air XXX A321-271NX was conducting flight from AAA to BBB. Approximately 15 minutes after takeoff, the flight crew received an ECAM message telling them to retard ENG number 2 thrust lever to IDLE. Thrust lever number 2 was put at idle, the crew declared a PAN PAN and the flight returned to departure airport and landed safely with no further incident."

3.5 hours later....

"an Air XXX A321-271NX was conducting flight XXX123 and took off from AAA
for a second time following an earlier occurrence , for BBB. Approximately
5 minutes after takeoff, the flight crew received another ECAM message telling them to retard ENG number 2 thrust lever to IDLE. Thrust lever number 2 was put
at idle, the crew declared a PAN PAN and the flight returned to departure airport and landed safely with no further incident. The aircraft was then grounded for maintenance."

Does the Airbus sometimes give an ECAM message to retard the thrust lever without further explanation or is it simply a matter of not all details making it to the reports?

[tdracer]

Not familiar with the Airbus logic - Boeing handles it a bit differently. If there is a detected engine fault after start, there is an EICAS "L/R ENG CONTROL" message - which is a no-dispatch condition. However, that message is inhibited above 80 knots - the logic being that at that point there is little that the pilots can do about it - and while the fault may be 'non-dispatchable' - it may not cause a shutdown so putting up a message could result in a nuisance IFSD. The EICAS message will appear after landing, and must be cleared prior to dispatch.
That being said, there should never be a case where an EICAS message related to engine health gets set without an associated maintenance fault also being set so that maintenance knows what to fix prior to return to service.
Unfortunately, at EIS of the 747-400 (~1988-90), we did a real good job of setting these messages nuisance, in effect training the maintenance people that if they cycled power and the message didn't come back, no further action was required. While the nuisance message issue has been pretty much eliminated, old habits persist...

[Rico_Corp]

Yes there are some ECAM alerts commanding THR LEVER to idle inflight such as ENG 1(2) REV PRESSURIZED, ENG 1(2) SYSTEM FAULT. There may be more.

[Check Airman]

Does the Airbus sometimes give an ECAM message to retard the thrust lever without further explanation or is it simply a matter of not all details making it to the reports?

The report is incomplete. The plane will present the fault, and the checklist will have the items that need to be actioned. You (should) never just see it say to retard the lever for no reason.

[FlightDetent]

Sounds like the OEB.

[FlightDetent]

i) sounds like the ENG SYS FAULT OEB. Nice read, really, and the engine type matches.

ii) An ECAM warning comes with a failure label and an action line. Reading a report about the action line without the failure label mentioned is pretty vain and I don't blame the reader.

iii) More interestingly: the text reak strongly of the crew taking action lines at face value and executing them, without going through the identification of the failure and confirmation of what's actually happened. FCTM explains how's it supposed to be done however a) it needs to be distilled out from the texts at the front that nobody reads, b) it's not being taught as a part of the TR course anymore.

Yes. Everyone learns and remembers that climbing with the stick released is 1g (ehm, not) but the fact that you can still perfectly execute a wrong check-list with the ECAM remains unmentioned in the classrooms.

[Denti]

The report is incomplete. The plane will present the fault, and the checklist will have the items that need to be actioned. You (should) never just see it say to retard the lever for no reason.

That is what should happen. However, the ECAM can and does present wrong procedures or truncated ones that leave out important bits. Happened to me already in normal line operation. If in doubt consult OEBs, QRH and FCOM.