Originally Posted by Centaurus
One 737 operator in Australia now requires their crews to select landing flap downwind because their pilots have difficulty flying a visual downwind and cannot guarantee to be stabilised for landing by 1000 ft. So the powers that be decide that if you can arrange to be stable and all landing checks completed before turning base, then in theory they should already be stable passing 1000 ft.
Forgive me for going off-topic for a post, but I don't actually have a problem with this. It works well. In the old days with no autothrottles, no FDs to speak of, and no FDM, it was all a piece of cake. Now it's different. Everybody's watching, and the automatics can make life more difficult. For example, remember the nice, reduced-power base and Final with the speed slowly reducing? That was because there was no ATS. Now, she's all on or all at idle. Flap changes, min speeds, VS being wound in, MCP speed being changed, checklists, sink rates, bank angles, it goes on and on. Much easier to do all that on downwind, get everything done and just do a easy base turn onto final. In fact, that is what my FCOM says to do on a min weather circle, so it can't be too dangerous. Better SA around the base turn.
And don't get me wrong; I am all in favour of having the visual pattern in our quiver of options. Now, back to white-knuckle crosswind landings!