2010-11 · NASA ASRS report 920545
After being dispatched with autothrust deferred; an A320 crew discovered during descent that the number two engine was not responding to thrust lever movement. Crew continued and landed without further incident.
We were dispatched with MEL 22-30-01 Auto Thrust System Inoperative. On descent we noticed #2 Eng Thrust Lever Disagree ECAM message flickering on and off. We also noticed the #2 engine N1 indication fluctuate from 30-51% N1. We initially thought this was associated with the Auto Thrust inoperative MEL item. As we approached 10000ft MSL the N1 stayed about 32% and N2 about 65%. As the F/O brought thrust levers up on both engines we noticed some aircraft yaw. Engine #1 was operating normally. We moved the #2 thrust lever from idle to full climb power with no response on the engine indications and no thrust or yawing of the aircraft as we moved the #2 thrust lever. The engine seemed to have failed and was wind milling. Oil pressure was normal; yet we had NO control of the engine with the thrust lever; there were no other ECAM indications. There were no vibrations or fire or overheat indications. To avoid thrust lever problems; and since it appeared we had lost all thrust and throttle control of the #2 engine; I ran the engine #2 failure checklist in the QRH. This was about 2000ft AGL. We completed the Engine Failure and Landing checklists and landed without incident. We taxied to the gate and completed our after landing and shutdown checklists and called Maintenance to report the malfunction. There was little time (last 3-4 min of flight) to do much coordination as this happened shortly before landing.
My primary concern while the Captain was consulting the checklists was to not become distracted at such as close distance to the airport and a critical phase of the flight and to safely land the aircraft. The flight landed without further incident and we taxiied to the gate and notified maintenance control of the incident.
Reporter states that Maintenance discovered that the cannon plug providing electrical signals to the FADEC (J9) was severely corroded and needed to be replaced. It was also deemed likely that this plug was the source of the auto thrust anomalies. The reporter believed at the time that the engine had failed but understands now that it was at idle with no cockpit control of thrust.
More incidents for this aircraft family
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.