stator vane
with A/T in ARM you have as you wish...manual thrust, you can push and pull to your hearts content, the A/T will have absolutely no input until the PF tries to stall the aircraft...like on a min wx circuit at night when it's all happening, get a bit distracted and the airspeed drops off,
And that's after it's done you the courtesy of saying "hey fella you're going to force me to do something unless you fix YOUR error".
ARM is NOT an active mode, it is a back up and a redundancy so, by definition, improves safety.
And as soon as I mention the word "safety" I win, end of story!
Denti - nice explanation, thanks.
I think an important point to emphasise is that you should be trained and the use (and times when NOT used) demonstrated in the SIM and discussed at suitable times during line training, get the impression it's not being trained then the wisest of the wise in Flight OPs say "why are we having problems"??