Keeping Autoland "Current"?
I was on a 737-800 into CLE last Saturday afternoon.
The pilot announced they had been asked by maintenance to perform an autoland, in order to keep it current.
He asked that all PED's be completely powered off before we reached 10,000 feet.
It had me wondering why an automated system would need to be run periodically "to keep it current"?
Or were they doing the autoland to keep the pilots current with the autoland system?
Does an autoland approach normally begin at FL100?
btw, the autoland (if they did use it) greased the landing.
It felt like very little flair, and we barely felt the wheels touch.
May have been a one wire though, as we were on the ground right after the threshold went under us.
Smoothest landing I can recall.
Quite the contrast to the spine bender I had going into PSG last August.