A321
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Human-Machine Interface; Troubleshooting; Workload; Confusion
ATC Issue All Types; Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown
Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic; Air Traffic Control Issued New Clearance; Flight Crew Requested ATC Assistance / Clarification
Aircraft; Human Factors; Procedure
Just slightly prior to our descent; I noticed that my ND had lost its map; and showed MAP NOT AVAIL on ND2. I told my captain; who then decided to maintain control of the aircraft and radios since his ND1 was still normal; asking me to perform the QRH procedure. At this time he also informed ATC of our degraded status. Once I found the procedure for a single FMGC failure; the captain expressed concern about these particular reset procedures and asked that we proceed carefully. As I read thru the QRH; I made a critical mistake and misread which CB to pull in order to reset FMGC 2. I as a result pulled the CB for FMGC 1 and caused further degradation; a dual FMGC failure. He asked that I call MTC for further help; which I did and spoke with our dispatcher; asking for Maintenance (MTC). We were on hold for almost 20 minutes; with the dispatcher trying multiple times to reach someone; but no one in MTC answered. At this point we were close enough to the airport and needed to focus on safely flying the plane; and he; the captain asked that I help him set up for a raw data approach; leaving the FMGC failure to be fixed on the ground. During this whole time; we had been descending on the arrival; with multiple controllers issuing us a 'fly direct to...'; 'cross XYZ at...' instructions; which we replied we were unable; so apparently ATC was confused with what we were unable to do; and not passing the word onto the next controller. We have some concern; although never directly told by ATC; that we may have missed or read back incorrectly or failed to follow ATC instructions during the arrival. Due to the work load caused by the degraded systems; we were rushed onto a revised STAR and approach with only raw data to navigate with. We landed without further incident.My lack of fully understanding the system failure and the QRH procedure; lead me to misread/misunderstand this particular FMGC reset. As a result I made the problem more complex and worse. This led us to high task saturation; potentially resulting in further errors. After reading thru this QRH procedure multiple times on the ground--although this mistake was mine--I feel the way the procedure is presented is extremely confusing and is not clear cut. I am also concerned that we were unable to reach MTC during my call with the dispatcher.Another thing that would have helped remove the pressure of the arrival would have been to declare an emergency since we no longer had either FMGC; this would have allowed ATC greater understanding of our degraded navigation status; and thereby giving us vectors and simple descent clearances.
After suffering the loss of the A321 First Officer's Nav display an error conducting the QRH to restore instead resulted in the loss of the Captain's as well. Already established in their descent prior to the loss; their request for special handling and raw data procedures was facilitated by ATC and a safe arrival at their destination resulted. A significant contributing factor to their inability to resolve the anomaly in a timely fashion was the failure of the dispatchers to connect them to their Maintenance Control department.