A320, en-route, northeast of Granada Spain, 2017

A320, en-route, northeast of Granada Spain, 2017

Summary

On 21 February 2017, an Airbus A320 despatched with the APU inoperative experienced successive failures of both air conditioning and pressurisation systems, the second of which occurred at FL300 and prompted the declaration of a MAYDAY and an emergency descent followed by an uneventful diversion to Alicante. The Investigation found that the cause of the dual failure was likely to have been the undetectable and undetected degradation of the aircraft bleed air regulation system and whilst noting a possibly contributory maintenance error recommended that a new scheduled maintenance task to check components in the aircraft type bleed system be established.

Description

On 21 February 2017, an Airbus A320 (EC-HTD) being operated by Vueling on a domestic passenger flight from Malaga to Barcelona as VLG2116 with the APU inoperative experienced successive failures of both air conditioning and pressurisation systems, the second of which occurred at FL300 and prompted the declaration of MAYDAY and an emergency descent followed by an uneventful diversion to Alicante during which one of the inoperative systems was successfully reinstated.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the Spanish Commission for the Investigation of Accidents and Incidents (CIAIAC). Both the CVR and FDR were removed from the aircraft and downloaded but it was found that relevant data on the CVR had been overwritten after the operator had failed to ensure that the recording was preserved before authorising a subsequent non-revenue flight by the aircraft to enable the completion of maintenance consequent upon the in-flight failure.

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