Narrative:

While on the arrival I had setup and briefed for an ILS to visual to runway 19R. But then between two arrival intersections; the airport turned around and I re-briefed for runway 1L. The first officer changed the runway and the perf appr page in the mcdu. Shortly after; we turned downwind and were given a heading by approach control. I then asked the first officer to extend the runway center line back the final approach fix. He did this by selecting no STAR while cleaning up the approach. While descending out of approximately 4;000 to 5;000 ft we experienced what I believe was a dual FMGC failure. Both pfds froze. Both nd's went blank. Both mcdu's froze and no data could be entered. While still descending I attempted to switch over to the ILS via raw date by transferring to the navigation ILS mode on the EFIS control panel and by engaging the navigation ILS buttons on the rmp standby navigation. I was successful in entering the ILS frequency; but was not able to enter the course. The nd displayed the compass rose; but no guidance needle came to view. We told ATC we were experiencing navigations problems and asked them for a vector/heading toward the end of the runway. There was a cloud layer at with ragged bases between 1;500 and 1;000 ft; so using ATC headings and the DME from the prog. Page; I started a 700 ft per minute descent from where I estimated the final approach fix to be and broke out below the clouds approximately 3 miles from the end of the runway. We landed on runway 1L and taxied to the gate. I have no idea why we had this failure. Maintenance preformed a full systems check and found no failures.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An A320 Captain reported that as the First Officer was reprogramming the FMGC following a runway change he selected NO STAR and both FMGC's and PFD's froze and the ND's blanked. A known NO STAR program bug caused both FMGC's to crash.

Narrative: While on the arrival I had setup and briefed for an ILS to visual to Runway 19R. But then between two arrival intersections; the airport turned around and I re-briefed for Runway 1L. The First Officer changed the runway and the PERF APPR Page in the MCDU. Shortly after; we turned downwind and were given a heading by Approach Control. I then asked the First Officer to extend the runway center line back the final approach fix. He did this by selecting NO STAR while cleaning up the approach. While descending out of approximately 4;000 to 5;000 FT we experienced what I believe was a dual FMGC failure. Both PFDs froze. Both ND's went blank. Both MCDU's froze and no data could be entered. While still descending I attempted to switch over to the ILS via raw date by transferring to the NAV ILS mode on the EFIS Control Panel and by engaging the NAV ILS buttons on the RMP Standby NAV. I was successful in entering the ILS frequency; but was not able to enter the course. The ND displayed the compass rose; but no guidance needle came to view. We told ATC we were experiencing navigations problems and asked them for a vector/heading toward the end of the runway. There was a cloud layer at with ragged bases between 1;500 and 1;000 FT; so using ATC headings and the DME from the PROG. Page; I started a 700 FT per minute descent from where I estimated the final approach fix to be and broke out below the clouds approximately 3 miles from the end of the runway. We landed on Runway 1L and taxied to the gate. I have no idea why we had this failure. Maintenance preformed a full systems check and found no failures.

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.