Originally Posted by
vilas
Isn't your question superfluous? Just because you would go around in CAT3 with Flare mode failure you would like to go around in visual with a flock of birds at 100ft? I can only hope I am not among passengers.
A IIIB approach is fail operational by design. A failure to flare may be trained in the sim, however it is by design not expected to be a failure mode that is acceptable. My time on 320/330/340 is limited, but on a B747 757 767 777 787, the system for autoland is not tracking the GS at the latter stages of the approach to land, and the algorithm that the flare is predicated on requires a valid RALT and not much more. In between the tracking of the GS to the flare, the aircraft tracking alters to an inertial biased solution. Now I haven't looked at that since an investigation some years back, but in normal operations a IIIB approach flown in accordance with the FCOM/POH/FCTM/AFM(latter is pretty light on detail..) should not fail. Bus's do pretty well from my limited time on type.