Originally Posted by
Uplinker
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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Interesting, thanks for the information although the retard ‘joke’ is not getting any funnier