Narrative:

During climb out of FL270 ECAM warned us of engine #2 over limit. I pulled throttle back a little and called for the checklist. Before we could get the checklist out the engine began to vibrate really bad (ECAM showed 9.9). I made the comment that we were probably going to have to shut the engine down. About that moment the engine started to spool down. We shut down the engine and declared an emergency; turned backed to departure airport; followed ECAM; ran the procedure; and called maintenance to advise them. ATC turned us right back and gave us lower. We descended all the way down without a level out and picked up the localizer and eventually the glide slope. We had the emergency vehicles standing by and had them check us out for a minute. All was fine. We continued to taxi until maintenance tugged us into the gate. Our oversights during the emergency were failure to fire the fire bottle on the engine we shutdown. Not sure if ECAM told us to do this. I know QRH says to when engine is damaged but did not have time to review it. Also; we requested to be towed in after landing ahead of time. When we exited the runway we could not see the tug. We continued to taxi expecting the tug to meet us. Our tug never arrived until on the ramp. We are only supposed to taxi on single engine with number one engine shut down. We continued as we had green system and yellow system powered through ptu (power transfer unit). We could have been more specific on where we wanted the tug to be when we landed. We also shut down the engine very quickly without me watching what the other pilot was doing but the airplane was very unstable at that point and my main concern was to keep the speed up and the jet straight and level. My hands were on the throttles and eyes on the attitude indicator.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An A300 Captain reported engine failure on climb out. The Flight Crew ran the procedure; coordinated with Maintenance; declared an emergency; and returned to departure airport.

Narrative: During climb out of FL270 ECAM warned us of engine #2 over limit. I pulled throttle back a little and called for the checklist. Before we could get the checklist out the engine began to vibrate really bad (ECAM showed 9.9). I made the comment that we were probably going to have to shut the engine down. About that moment the engine started to spool down. We shut down the engine and declared an emergency; turned backed to departure airport; followed ECAM; ran the procedure; and called Maintenance to advise them. ATC turned us right back and gave us lower. We descended all the way down without a level out and picked up the LOC and eventually the glide slope. We had the emergency vehicles standing by and had them check us out for a minute. All was fine. We continued to taxi until Maintenance tugged us into the gate. Our oversights during the emergency were failure to fire the fire bottle on the engine we shutdown. Not sure if ECAM told us to do this. I know QRH says to when engine is damaged but did not have time to review it. Also; we requested to be towed in after landing ahead of time. When we exited the runway we could not see the tug. We continued to taxi expecting the tug to meet us. Our tug never arrived until on the ramp. We are only supposed to taxi on single engine with number one engine shut down. We continued as we had green system and yellow system powered through PTU (Power Transfer Unit). We could have been more specific on where we wanted the tug to be when we landed. We also shut down the engine very quickly without me watching what the other pilot was doing but the airplane was very unstable at that point and my main concern was to keep the speed up and the jet straight and level. My hands were on the throttles and eyes on the attitude indicator.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.