Happened yesterday...AFAIK.
The back-up instruments should continue to function, they're independently powered, but they give you; an attitude gyro, altitude and airspeed...and they're located in the center stack, an awkward scan location...
That's it, no real heading, no nav, no VOR/DME, no ILS...so I put it in layman's terms. Best case, you can keep the shiny side up and not hit the ground with the standby instruments...but you can't navigate and you can't fly an approach of any kind.
Luckily, New Orleans has military users, so they have a PAR, unlike most civil fields. But PARs are not trained by any airline since they are a military-only capability.
I gather that the ceiling was about 600 feet, that's about 2 miles out on final...and whether they flew an ASR or PAR doesn't matter...they flew a jet without most of the cockpit working...that's why you hear the controllers "calling the turn"...the crew didn't even have heading.
I don't know what flight controls were working, but they clearly did not have brakes or steering on landing. Those are Fly By Wire just like the rest of the flight controls. With FBW, if you lose all of the computers (and there are 7 on the -320) that translate pilot inputs to the surface actuators, you're done. As each of the computers fail, you get degraded modes of operation, with reduced response and reduced surface movement...this is about 50 pages of discussion in the flight manual, so I would prefer not to go into it all here...and it's been about 7 years since I flew the "Bus"...
But from a former bus driver - they did a GREAT JOB.
