CL300 its not different if you realise that thrust manages energy directly and pitch manages airspeed and vertical speed directly.
But apparently that is heresy! Despite it being valid in all phases of flight.
The discussion issue results from both airspeed and vertical speed being a form of energy. And thus they can both be "managed" with thrust depending on the pitch change or lack thereof.
And offcourse there is an element of mass inertia, that initially keeps the aircraft on its path despite disturbances.
With regard to the airbus, you need to keep in mind that even though you might not move the sidestick in manual flight, this does not imply that various control surfaces are not moving either.
With regard to the flare. The requirement for energy reduces as the aircraft enters the groundeffect (wingspan determines when groundeffect starts), so we have to reduce thrust.
Speed is traded for a reduced vertical speed (to prevent structural damage).
If you suddenly encounter a disturbance in the flare say a downdraft the aircraft lacks energy. And either the speed decays faster (higher pitch needed to control v/s) or rate-of-descent increases in order to make up for this loss of energy, which is not very desirable so close to the ground. You can counter this by retarding the thrust slower, stop retarding the thrust or in severe cases adding thrust (might need to think of a go-around).
In case of an updraft you may need to retard thrust faster or close it completely straight away. After that there is not much to do except making sure you touchdown in the touchdown zone or go-around, so likely you will pitch up a bit less/hold the pitch in order to keep the aircraft descending.
Obviously there will be pitch changes, or changes in the rate of pitch change as well.
If you try to manage the energy solely with pitch, in severe cases you might make a nosewheel landing, a tailstrike or land with to much vertical speed (hard landing).
Excess energy makes it easier to "finetune" the vertical speed, so often leaving thrust on makes it's easier to make a greaser, but obviously it increases the landing distance as well. Therefore it's not desired.
Last edited by 737Jock; 31st Mar 2014 at 00:19.