Illuminating excerpt from the transcript
>> i assume you're referring to a specific issue raised during the 787 program by our test pilot related to the wake-up function of the autothrottle, where they were conducting a flight test, and there was a flight level change initiated, and the flight level change was interrupted by another event, in this case it was a traffic avoidance event, and as a result of the logic of the airplane, the autothrottles went into hold mode. Our pilot was monitoring airspeed and noticed airspeed was decaying, and as part of the test pilot functions, lapierre speed to decay further to see what would happen. -- allowed the test be to decay further to see what would happen. Our test pilot believed that the autothrottle would wake up, not realizing that the autothrottle, since it was on, as mr. Myers explained, the autothrottle was on, the autothrottle would not wake up. It was already awake. So he allowed speeds of decay, and at a save point, he put throttles back in, brought the thrust back up and continued the flight. He raised that as a response item. Basically way for the faa to document a potential concern and to get a response from the applicant, in this case boeing, response to the question about why it works that way, and to determine if it is susceptible. In the process of doing that evaluation, over working with boeing on this one, the pilot determine that the fact that the autothrottle did not wake up without a safety issue, nor was it a regulatory noncompliance. Given those two critical factors, at that point, he believes it was still an area where there could be improvement , and he worked with boeing to include additional information in the flight manual to explain that the autothrottle on the 787 would not wake up from an autothrottle hold.