What happened
On November 10, 2023, at 0713 UTC, a Lufthansa Airbus A319, registration D-AIBG, was conducting an IFR flight from Frankfurt Airport, Germany, to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Netherlands. During the descent, the aircraft experienced a failure of both electrical generators.
Preliminary flight data recorder information indicates that while the aircraft was at an altitude of approximately 31,500 feet, Generator 2 failed, followed by the failure of Generator 1. This sequence caused the aircraft to enter an emergency electrical configuration, which triggered the automatic deployment of the ram air turbine (RAT). Data from the flight data recorder was interrupted for roughly 4 minutes, resuming once the aircraft exited the emergency electrical configuration. The aircraft landed at Schiphol without further incident, and there were no injuries reported.
The investigation
As the State of Design and Manufacture for the relevant components, the National Transportation Safety Board was delegated the investigation by the Dutch Safety Board. Investigators removed the aircraft's two Integrated Drive Generators (IDG) and two Generator Control Units (GCU) for examination.