2023-05 · NASA ASRS report 2008000
Air carrier First Officer reported the aircraft entered an uncommanded pitch downwards while on autopilot with the glideslope and localizer captured. The autopilot was turned off; the aircraft corrected; and the approach was completed by hand.
I am unsure what category this falls under. On final for the ILS for Runway 10R in PDX; the aircraft aggressively entered an uncommanded pitched down on autopilot with glideslope and localizer captured. We were instructed to maintain 3000 ft. until established. We intercepted the localizer and glideslope simultaneously outside of HAIRN. I immediately turned the autopilot off; corrected; and continued the approach by hand and landed without incident. There was no control malfunction and the plane flew normally after the autopilot was turned off. No aircraft; FOM; or operational limitations were exceeded. The pitch down had not developed enough before I intervened to constitute a missed approach situation. At the time of the erroneous pitch down; we were on both glidepath and localizer. Upon breaking out of the cloud coverage around 2700 ft. AGL; I noticed Aircraft Y holding short of Runway 10R at the hold-short line. I am unsure if this was a cause of the erroneous pitch down due to interference or not.
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.