An airbus that would not exit the holding pattern? Few years ago...

[huncowboy]

CA of mine told me that there was a United A320 that would not exit the holding pattern a few yeara ago. The crew had to pull quite a few breakers to finally get the airplane out of the pattern.

Any truth to it? I was trying to find it under the FAA's database but nothing.

 

[Tejas-Jet]

I heard that story 15 years ago...but the version I heard was NWA A-320...It's all BS.

I'm surprised that story is still around.

 

[get2flyin]

The version I heard was from a Private pilot pilot buddy of mine who works for an aerospace technologies manufacturer. The story that is circulating through his company is the crew couldn't shut off the autopilot, which was stuck in the holding pattern, through any known means. Supposedly, they had to wake-up some programmer in France in the middle of the night who walked them through an unapproved back door in the MCDU, that only he knew about, over the radio via a translator. That allowed them to disable the FMGC and manually fly to Chicago, moments before running out of fuel.

What a bunch of BS :laugh:

 

[contrail67]

I heard it was a NWA 320 also.

 

[oldxfr8dog]

It's a fact!
All the MCDU would do is print out their checking account balance.
Turns out they had their PIN wrong...

 

[Bringupthebird]

NWA 320 was the one that couldn't stop going around in Phoenix (which did get pretty low on fuel). As it was explained to me. everytime it got into the flare it would go into Alpha Floor and TOGA thrust. Finally a tech told them to hold the A/T cutout on the thrust lever until it disabled the A/T entirely.

Holding pattern? Maybe that was why the prompt was changed from EXIT to IMMEDIATE EXIT. =:{)

 

[oldxfr8dog]

NWA 320 was the one that couldn't stop going around in Phoenix (which did get pretty low on fuel). As it was explained to me. everytime it got into the flare it would go into Alpha Floor and TOGA thrust. Finally a tech told them to hold the A/T cutout on the thrust lever until it disabled the A/T entirely.

Holding pattern? Maybe that was why the prompt was changed from EXIT to IMMEDIATE EXIT. =:{)

I don't think they went around more than once or twice. Dual RA failure, the a/c didn't recognize it was landing.

 

[Tejas-Jet]

PHX ? Hmmmm...when I heard the story, it was a NWA 320 at DCA....just like any fairy tale...they get better with time

 

[apache]

I heard it was enter ctrl+alt+del and then run c:/fdisk.

It was state of the art 386 technology in 1992.

 

[oldxfr8dog]

I heard it was enter ctrl+alt+del and then run c:/fdisk.

It was state of the art 386 technology in 1992.

More like 1986. 8088 if anything.
I could never do anything with those DOS commands...