Originally Posted by
stilton
Never flown any kind of Airbus so I’m trying to educate myself, from what I’ve read even with auto thrust on it does not reduce thrust to idle before touchdown but cues the PF to do so whether it’s a manually flown approach or full Autoland?
Unless it is an auto-land, the Airbus doesn't presume to know exactly when you want, or need, idle thrust during the flare. Very gusty wind conditions can require a longer flare while you get the attitude stabilised, and/or de-crab, just before the mains touch; so better to let PF decide, rather than chop the thrust automatically from underneath them.
The Airbus will remind us to reduce to idle by saying: "Retard.......retard......", (which I always thought was a comment on my mental state when I got it wrong !)
But it will not force the thrust to idle, and if you don't move the thrust levers, it will add thrust to maintain Vapp.
Auto-lands only happen with benign winds, so there is less of an issue. And the auto-land logic is cueing the auto-thrust from precise height measurements derived from both Rad-Alts - rather than looking along the runway, as the human does - and precise IAS measurements, ditto. So it does retard the thrust automatically and gets the 'retard' point right, since those measurements are not fluctuating significantly during auto-land conditions.
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