Thanks, Jammed Stab. The oldest I have is 2006 and there is no trace of this automatic go-around feature in it. Apparently, even when it was in effect, hardly anyone knew about it. In typical Boeing fashion, they can't seem to write a manual that is understandable by the average pilot, as the accident report reflects:
a) The pilots were not aware of this feature of the VNAV mode.
It is worthwhile noting the following points:
• Boeing and Air France pilots qualified on the B 747-400 who participated in the technical investigation were not aware of this feature either. It was necessary to call on the expertise of specialists in the Boeing design office to obtain this information.
• Boeing’s documentation did not mention this feature (some information has since been added), nor did Air France or UTA’s.
• The captain indicated that when he went through qualification training on the B747-400 at Boeing, instructors told him that the VNAV mode operating in VOR mode still had some glitches to be ironed out. He had since received no additional training on the subject. We can thus see that the particular point in question was neither studied, nor introduced, in the course of other exercises.
• Air France instructors were not aware of this feature of the airplane and were therefore unable to include it in their training of the copilot or in periodic training of pilots.
Here's the link to the report if anyone is interested.
http://lessonslearned.faa.gov/AirFra...ent_report.pdf