Do Airbus pilots normally disengage the Auto Throttle on a manual landing?
Do pilots (Airbus or Boeing) normally prefer a manual landing to a A/P landing?
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Sign up to join this communityDo Airbus pilots normally disengage the Auto Throttle on a manual landing ?
Depends on what you mean.
During the initial part of the approach, no, they do not deactivate the autothrust (not autothrottle, in this case):
But the autothrust is not designed for landing and just before touchdown there is an automatic callout in the cockpit: Retard. Retard.
(it can be heard in this video 4 times).
The callout is needed because of the A/THR inner working: while in SPEED mode
it can apply any throttle between 0 and the current throttle lever position; i.e., if for example the throttle is at the 80% setting, the autothrust can apply any throttle between 0% and 80% (based on the required airspeed). At the Retard
callout the pilots will move the levers to the IDLE position, effectively deactivating the autothrust:
Most (but absolutely not all) pilots let the aircraft land itself most of the time. I asked a number of different pilots this question (30+ year captain at USAirways, a 3 year FO at Spirit, a 20+ year captain at Delta) and their estimate was that 75% or more of landings were done via auto-pilot. One of these pilots was almost exclusively Boeing, one was almost exclusively Airbus, and the other estimated that his experience was roughly 60% Boeing.
Retard
(put the levers to IDLE) A/T is disengaged. $\endgroup$