All aircraft systems suddenly frozen mid flight

[alexv]

A few hours into a flight the aircraft completely froze up. The sim continued but every screen in the a310 was frozen and none of the buttons were working. I went into dev mode and took a screenshot of the error. I had just copied a secondary flight plan in the fmc right before this crash happened.

[Deleted Account]

Heya!

Thanks for the report. With copied the secondary flightplan you mean activated it to primary? Cause I unfortunately can´t replicate it like that 😞 

Also can´t reproduce it when copying the primary fpln to the sec fpln.

[alexv]

No I mean copying primary to secondary. But it didn't immediately freeze after doing that. I think I went back to the FPLN page and scrolled up and down a few times before everything froze up.

[Deleted Account]

If you could try and reliably reproduce this, it would be a great help at fixing this issue. But for the moment its rather hard for us to nail this particular one down 😕 

[alexv]

I think it will be difficult to reproduce it since I've done about a dozen flights and this is the first time it's happened, but I will try to do retrace my steps during my next flight and see if it happens again.

[WernerAir]

Hi there,

I would like to report that I have had the same issue twice in the last two days.

I cannot yet say what exactly needs to happen to reproduce it, but here is what I have observed so far:

• In both cases, it happened several hours into the flight, nearing TOD. Yesterday it was a flight from LIRF to HUEN, today it was LSZH to GCTS
• For contrast, last weel I did a flight from EDDH to KBOS where this did not happen - I don't think there was an update to the A310 in the meantime
• In both cases where it happened, I was fidgeting around with the FMC. In both cases I think it happened right after I pressed one of the keys to the right of the display. Yesterday I don't remember what page I was on, but today I was on the FLTPLN page and wanted to set a lower altitude constraint for one of the upcoming waypoints.
• I did not try to activate the secondary flight plan (in fact I haven't yet found out how to do that), but today I had copied the primary flight plan - I am not sure whether I had done that yesterday.
• The effect in both ocurrences was that no cockpit dial, button or switch could be used anymore. The aircraft continued flying, although its capability to hold altitude deteriorated.
• I "solved" the issue by saving the flight, going back to the menu and then loading the flight I had saved. This is not too god a workaround though - I could continue the flight afterwards, but I had to reconfigure most of the aircraft after reloading and also reprogram the FMC. In addition, although I could complete the flights in both cases I had the feeling that the aircraft was rather hard to fly manually in the final approach later, requiring strong aileron inputs to keep it on runway course. Especially the landing in HUEN was not much fun...

Anyway, I hope this account helps to narrow it down, and in any case I wanted to make it known that this seems not to be an isolated incident. I will continue observing what makes this reproducible (and it may be the secondary flight plan), but there seems to be an issue somewhere and I would venture to say it's connected to the FMC.

Nevertheless, congratulations for an otherwise pretty neat airplane - and thank you for providing it!

Edited December 7, 2022 by WernerAir

[Deleted Account]

Thanks for reporting for sure 🙂 And yeah, if you manage to reliably reproduce it, please do let us know! I´ll play around a bit more with the RSKs and see if i can get it to crash.

[B Rad]

I have had the exact same issue as WernerAir, except this happened after I input the approach into the FMS and pressed exec. 

Left FMC went blank, all buttons and knobs would click but were uresponsive. The backup attitude indicator gauge was the only thing working. All other guages were frozen. Could not extend flaps but could extend landing gear. Could also extend speedbrake using my joystick but, oddly, it did not appear extended on the aircraft model (only the effects were apparent), whereas the landing gear was visibly extended. Yoke was also throzen as were throttles. EFB was working fine. This was about 5hrs into flight OAKB - LFTM. 

 

Edited December 8, 2022 by B Rad

[Deleted Account]

Again, we really want to fix those bugs, but we need reproducable steps to get to the frozen state. Otherwise it is nearly impossible to iron those out 😕

[WernerAir]

I guess the first important thing is learning that this is not something that is just happening to me (i.e. something I did wrong), but there actually seems to be a bug somewhere. Now it's up to us to narrow it down...

Unfortunately I cannot contribute to that today, but the good news is I did a flight earlier from GCXO to LIPZ (roughly 4 hours, give or take) and everything worked as it should. The one thing I decidedly did not do today was copy the active flight plan as secondary. I also played around with the FMC a bit less during the flight, so I guess the only thing I can say for sure is that the freeze doesn't always happen.

[Deleted Account]

Oh yeah, 100%, if I made it sound like it was your fault, my apologies. This definitely is a bug and we need to fix it. But yeah, we unfortnuately need reproducable steps for that.

[Tarom310]

Same problem here. After 3h near the TOD (OIIE-VABB) the instruments did strange things, the buttons didn´t work. I tried to fly with the information from shiftZstats but in Littlenavmap the aircraft didn´t move. It was my first flight after the update and it worked fine before.

[WernerAir]

So I have been trying, but so far I have not been able to reproduce the issue, even on longer flights where I have had a secondary flight plan loaded and spent some time playing around with the FMC. I have found out that I am not sure whether step climbs are working as they should, but regarding the systems freeze there are no news.

I guess this is in itself a piece of good news...

[Deleted Account]

That sounds like good news indeed 🙂

[arslan.turegun]

A similar issue happened to a friend last night.
When he tried to enter a STAR for rwy 17L at LTFM the FMC has gone black and all systems frozen. I also have tried to enter the same arrival today and it happened to me too. This happened only on that specific runway so I wonder if there is some sort of problem with FMC and Navigraph data.

 

Regards,

Arslan Türegün

[Deleted Account]

21 hours ago, arslan.turegun said:

A similar issue happened to a friend last night.
When he tried to enter a STAR for rwy 17L at LTFM the FMC has gone black and all systems frozen. I also have tried to enter the same arrival today and it happened to me too. This happened only on that specific runway so I wonder if there is some sort of problem with FMC and Navigraph data.

 

Regards,

Arslan Türegün

Yeah, that will probably be down due to a Navdata issue, as the default sim doesn´t even include LTFM.

[Vlogys]

I had the same issue happen after a 5 hour flight when arriving to Dubai on VUTEB3B arrival. Aircraft froze when trying to set route VUTEB-REREK (ATC cut the whole star for me). When set the route to cut the STAR, all systems froze.  I´m using the OMDB from FeelThere scenery and NAVIGRAPH data.

[Acerazus]

I also had a similar when using the secondary flight plan.

I was flying from EGLL to LSZH and was in decent mode to LSZH (P. DES). I decided to clear the secondary flight plan from active, and change the routing in the secondary flight plan to my diversion airport (LSZH--> LIML). I had not entered the route but simply the TO/FROM in the secondary flight plan. After entering it in and clicking on SEC F-PLAN (LSK 2L), the FMGC went blank and all systems froze. Like everyone else, the plane was still flying, but all the aircraft systems froze.

Not sure if this helps to solve the puzzle but I'm curious if anyone else is able to recreate it.

[Winniefred]

So I'm not sure if I've been having the same issue but in two occasions (yesterday and just now) all avionics and systems froze without me touching a thing. In both cases I was just waiting for the AP to turn into the last waypoint for final approach and then everything freezes and the AP doesn't work anymore. It was a primary route, wasn't even looking at the FMC ahaha! 

This was the route: 
ROTW5B ROTWE DCT NATOR N850 TRA UZ670 BASGO Z424 AKASU DCT VP342 DCT MF506 DCT

Yesterday I had the very same issue at a different route; EDDM - LIMJ, again at the last waypoint. 

It seems weird to me since the aircraft was already configured and I hadn't touched a thing, was just waiting for the ILS signal and then to disconnect the AP. 
 

Let me know if there's anything I can do to help identify/reproduce the issue. 
 

P.S: I'm quite new to MSFS having coming from other sims, literally started flying it on sunday, so when this first happened I thought it was some messed up simulated emergency where you just lose all avionics and instead I quickly realised not even the yoke was moving hahahah! 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Winniefred

[Winniefred]

3 hours ago, Winniefred said:

So I'm not sure if I've been having the same issue but in two occasions (yesterday and just now) all avionics and systems froze without me touching a thing. In both cases I was just waiting for the AP to turn into the last waypoint for final approach and then everything freezes and the AP doesn't work anymore. It was a primary route, wasn't even looking at the FMC ahaha! 

This was the route: 
ROTW5B ROTWE DCT NATOR N850 TRA UZ670 BASGO Z424 AKASU DCT VP342 DCT MF506 DCT
 

Okay so I did manage to reproduce and capture it on video two seconds before it happened, I'll leave a link below (excuse me for the very poor amateur quality but it was a last second thought to record it). 
 

Funny thing is that is happened on the same route as before at the very same waypoint MF506. 

Link to the video:

As you can see, everything freezes and stops working. 

[Deleted Account]

5 hours ago, Winniefred said:

Okay so I did manage to reproduce and capture it on video two seconds before it happened, I'll leave a link below (excuse me for the very poor amateur quality but it was a last second thought to record it). 
 

Funny thing is that is happened on the same route as before at the very same waypoint MF506. 

Link to the video:

As you can see, everything freezes and stops working. 

Thanks for posting this, I´ll try and reproduce it tomorrow 🙂

[gemuetlich]

It has happened 3 times to me in the last few days. Here are the videos I was streaming and the exact time it happened:
 

On this one, it happened after I clicked on the NEAREST AIRPORTS (YouTube link):

Clicked on NEAREST AIRPORTS

On this one, it seems like it got frozen also when I clicked on NEAREST AIRPORTS (YouTube link):

Clicked on NEAREST AIRPORTS

On this one, if it was during external view or NEAREST AIRPORTS (YouTube link):

Not sure if NEAREST AIRPORTS or during external view

Not sure if it's relevant but I do use Navigraph and always have the latest AIRAC update.

 

[Martin Stofko]

Hi there,

This bug has happened to me for the first time yesterday during a climb out of KPHL. 

Not sure if this is helpful, but the only different thing I did compared to my other flights was to use the Simbrief import to get my route loaded. Normally I enter it manually. I also copy primary to secondary flight plan but was not trying to activate it. 

Pressing a right RSK on one of the waypoints caused it to freeze up. I was trying to remove a speed restriction but it crashed as soon as I pressed the waypoint right RSK button. Again, I’ve done this many times before apart from loading the route from Simbrief. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Cheers!

Martin

[bear.is.flying]

This happened to me when I made a secondary flight plan (KLAX/KSAN), selected SEC F-PLN -> KSAN -> STAR -> LOC RWY 27 w/ LYNDI transition and no STAR. As soon as I hit *INSERT, the FMC went blank, and all the button stopped responding.

The primary F-PLN was KLAX/KLAX, with only RW25R as the departure waypoint and no other nav points. I was just flying around using heading select and LVL/CH while testing some things, and decided to ad-hoc land at KSAN.

Edited January 17, 2023 by bear.is.flying

[Mountainbuilder]

Same problem here with MSFS Beta 1.30.12.0. In two cases this was directly after importing a new SimBrief flightplan via SEC FPL. Avoiding the SEC FPL, Navigraph data and SimBrief, I got another freeze while just hitting the DIR button. All displays freeze, even external animations freeze (flaps), but the aircraft can still be controlled and landed under VMC conditions. Flaps are effective, even though invisible.

Unable to find a sequence that reproduces the problem immediately, but for me EVERY extended, training-like session that includes multiple legs and multiple airports ends with this kind of panel freeze. Long single-leg flights seem to be less frequently affected.