Originally Posted by
Tobin
Now, I can stand to be corrected. Is the format of the checklist officially described anywhere? How are the indented statements to be read? Are they simply independent instructions to be executed always?
They don't look like it to me. They each look like a dependency or continuation of the numbered step immediately above. My natural reading is to get through "2. Autopilot (if engaged) ....." and think Okay, autopilot is definitely disengaged. The rest of this is irrelevant. What's step 3? Then move onto step 3.
Correct.
As alluded to above, a QRH typically contains an explanation of the conventions used, symbology, etc (for example, what a row of square dots means), which can run to several pages.
But it would appear that Boeing (and presumably Airbus) doesn't consider it necessary to spell out that a checklist item of the form
"If (condition X exists) perform (action Y)" means that whether you do or don't do Y depends on X. Presumably that is considered sufficiently obvious as to need no further explanation.