Qantas 737-400 question.
*preferably only Qantas 737-400 or -800 pilots replies only please*
I recently flew the jump seat (i'm staff). I foolishly congratulated the skipper on a good landing, but i'm not sure whether it was an autoland or not. Ever since then it has been bugging me for aaages, so I've bit the bullet and have come here. I'm not fishing for company procedures or anything. Just a clear answer based on probability and experience as to whether it was manual or not to put my mind at rest. Send me a private message if it's better for you.
So to be extra clear, my question is this, was it a manually flown landing or an autoland?
Here's some observations I made:
- flew into Brisbane to runway 19 from sydney (saw the 19 on the runway).
- weather was awesome. Could see everything. No clouds, rain etc.
- i did notice the skipper press the APP button, i don't know at what height he pushed it at though.
- when we turned to line up with the runway, it felt a little bit different (shaky I guess is the word), compared to all the other turns we made before hand.
- only 1 a/p on when "Radio Altimeter" was aurally annunciated.
- we looked to be really close to the runway as soon as we'd finished lining up with the runway.
- it was a left turn, to line up with the runway. I guesstimate we were at about 3000" maybe less when we turned.
- i heard the word "visual" get thrown around.
- everything happened too quick for me to take notice of anything else. Plus I was looking out at the awesome view (Night flight).