LEM “Who talked about autothrottle inoperative in yesterday's approach?”
No one!
The point of the question (which has not been answered), was to highlight the range of considerations that should be made for what, at face value, is an innocuous change in operation. Many operators / pilots may not make the link between the allowed technical deviation (no autothrottle) and any increased risk in operation.
If the autothrottle commences a smooth retard at 27 ft RA (?), then logically crew procedures for manual operation during an autoland should require similar operation by the pilot. Are there operators out there who have such procedures and if so how are they taught? If additional landing distance is required, how is this communicated; I was unaware of the 737 requirement, have other operators learnt from this exchange?
My concern here is less for any individual failing, but more for the lack of corporate or regulatory oversight. Our industry strives to manage threat and error, but at first if we are unable to identify the threats leading to reduced safety margins, then what hope is there for managing them. The managers / regulators should give guidance and help as well as police the operation; I found that this was not always the case often due to a similar lack of specific knowledge as indicated in the thread.
Kit stick in here with us; the industry needs such expertise and enlightenment:
“Captains often forget that they have to teach, first officers forget that they still have to learn, and individually we forget that we don’t know it all.”