Hi guys,
I fly the 737 classics and the NGs. Now, our Instructors and Examiners preach the use of AT in the arm mode for all approaches except a visual traffic pattern. As variations in attitudes/speed/configuration happen very quickly in a traffic pattern, the AT is best kept out of picture. Now, recently we had this Instructor guy from Boeing and he was travelling OBS. on couple of our flights. He happened to notice this and on one of my flights, when he pointed out this, I tried to get the Boeing point of view. Now he said a lot of operators in the world flying the 737s were deselecting the AT and others disconnecting it. According to him, if complete overview was taken, there were more operators reporting AT "Kick-ins" which somewhat destabilized the approaches and a minority reported having used the TOGA feature available with "deselecting". So as he put it, Boeing sees the entire world scenario and based on that still recommends "Disconnecting" the AT. As far as I am concerned, I'm happy "de-selecting" the AT following SOPs and disconnecting will take some time getting used to. BTW, based on his observations, my company has already started re-valuating the AT modes in approaches.
Happy flying and keep it safe out there,
