What happened
On 24 September 1994, a Tarom Airbus A310, registered YR-LCA, was conducting a scheduled passenger flight from Bucharest to Paris Orly. During the approach to runway 26, the flight crew was configuring the aircraft for landing. While descending through 1,700 feet, the pilot requested an extension of the flaps to 20 degrees.
As the flaps were extended, the autothrottle responded by increasing engine thrust. The crew attempted to counter the resulting nose-up pitch by manually adjusting the controls while the autothrole remained in automatic mode. During this process, the trimmable horizontal stabilizer began moving in a nose-up direction. As the crew applied nose-down elevator pressure to compensate, the stabilizer reached its maximum nose-up limit. This caused the aircraft to pitch up sharply to 60 degrees, leading to a sudden climb and a subsequent stall. The aircraft reached a maximum altitude of 4,100 feet before pitching down to -33 degrees. The crew managed to regain control of the aircraft and completed a visual circuit before landing safely at Orly.
The investigation
The BEA investigation focused on the interaction between the autothrottle, the flap extension, and the aircraft's longitudinal stability. Investigators analyzed the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) to reconstruct the sequence of events. The examination specifically looked at the operation of the Automatic Flight System (AFS) protection logic, the movement of the trimmable horizontal stabilizer, and the crew's manual interventions during the configuration change.