I would like to pick up something that arose in
this thread a while back and repost two posts:-
From ' Hudson'
I don't know about the real aircraft but the 737 Classic simulator will execute a perfectly respectable smooth coupled landing just on one autopilot. Under this one autopilot operation there is definately no autotrim back at 400RA though, nor at any other stage. It is comforting to have that fall back availibility on one autopilot if you do not have a second autopilot available for some reason and you just have to get in in bad weather on the ILS.
From 'Seat1APlease'
Hudson I am glad you mentioned that because the same thought struck me. We were told that Mr Boeing had to allow for the case where a crew for whatever reason did an approach with only one a/p engaged. (200/300/400 series)
It obviously has to stay in until cat one decision height but what then? either drop out or continue and land or fly stright into the ground, so the default was it would continue for A/land but it wasn't approved and therefore not published nor documented.
As you say there is no guarantee that the sim and the real beast will behave the same, and we couldn't of course try it on the real thing, so it became one of those urban myths which no-one is quite sure about.
Perhaps someone can clear this up?
I now have it on 'good authority' (a 737 sim trainer!!) that the 737 (sim) will indeed perform a 'reduced flare autoland' single channel.
Can anyone throw any light on this ie:-
1) Is it a 'deliberate' function?
2) What 'cues'/inputs does it use for the landing manouevre?
3) Will it work on the real a/c or is it a sim software 'wildy'?