Narrative:

After departing runway 14 and while climbing through about 5000 ft; we experienced a simultaneous dual mfd failure. At the time; the airport was in a small pocket of VMC conditions; surrounded by a ring of thunderstorms and rain showers. With the dual mfd failure we lost both navigational map displays. Most importantly; however; we lost our weather radar depictions. We could not find any reference in the QRH for an mfd malfunction; never mind a dual mfd failure. I immediately made the decision to visually return to the field. At the time the aircraft weighed approximately 49;000lbs. The ILS was notamed out-of-service and had not been working during our earlier RNAV approach to the airport. Now; with our mfds both blank; I was worried that; should the weather conditions deteriorate; we would not be able to safely conduct an RNAV approach either. So; rather than wait to burn off fuel; I chose; in the interest of safety; to conduct an overweight landing. I felt that that would be preferable to taking the risk of not being able to land if the nearby showers were to reduce the visibility over the airport. Additionally; as I had never previously experienced a dual mfd failure; I was somewhat concerned that other instruments or systems might also begin failing. In other words; in my mind; a dual mfd failure was extremely rare and could possibly be the first warning sign of a more serious catastrophic failure. Fortunately; it was not. The landing was conducted uneventfully and with a shallow descent rate.the surrounding thunderstorms and rain showers posed a significant threat to our now radarless aircraft. Additionally; the inability to conduct any sort of instrument approach posed an additional threat. Finally; an apparent lack of appropriate QRH procedures prevented us from finding a method of containing the threat. I would suggest that it is important to have a QRH procedure for a single and a double mfd failure.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A CRJ-200 Captain reported losing both MFD's while on departure near thunderstorms and returning to land at the departure airport.

Narrative: After departing runway 14 and while climbing through about 5000 ft; we experienced a simultaneous dual MFD failure. At the time; the airport was in a small pocket of VMC conditions; surrounded by a ring of thunderstorms and rain showers. With the dual MFD failure we lost both navigational map displays. Most importantly; however; we lost our weather radar depictions. We could not find ANY reference in the QRH for an MFD malfunction; never mind a dual MFD failure. I immediately made the decision to visually return to the field. At the time the aircraft weighed approximately 49;000lbs. The ILS was NOTAMed out-of-service and had not been working during our earlier RNAV approach to the airport. Now; with our MFDs both blank; I was worried that; should the weather conditions deteriorate; we would not be able to safely conduct an RNAV approach either. So; rather than wait to burn off fuel; I chose; in the interest of safety; to conduct an overweight landing. I felt that that would be preferable to taking the risk of not being able to land if the nearby showers were to reduce the visibility over the airport. Additionally; as I had never previously experienced a dual MFD failure; I was somewhat concerned that other instruments or systems might also begin failing. In other words; in my mind; a dual MFD failure was extremely rare and could possibly be the first warning sign of a more serious catastrophic failure. Fortunately; it was not. The landing was conducted uneventfully and with a shallow descent rate.The surrounding thunderstorms and rain showers posed a significant threat to our now radarless aircraft. Additionally; the inability to conduct any sort of instrument approach posed an additional threat. Finally; an apparent lack of appropriate QRH procedures prevented us from finding a method of containing the threat. I would suggest that it is important to have a QRH procedure for a single AND a double MFD failure.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site 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.