Auto throttle issue

[Magoo]

I've learned it should rather be 2.0° to 2.5° per sec.

It's what they teach theses days, to prevent tail strikes! Also the rate slightly decreases as the tail gets inside its own ground effect and you need to increase the back pressure.

I start flaring at about 40' if heavy, 30' if light, and yes you can chop the power off if heavy as opposed to flying a turboprop where if you do that, you fall out of the sky!

[FlyingBlue]

Hopefully this document from Boeing clarifies our doubts about the Autothrottle issue.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tu1hil56eaj0eh3/Boeing747.pdf?dl=0

[Britjet]

Yep - if you wait for ground effect you will be restowing a lot of oxygen masks... ;-)

Peter

[FlyingBlue]

Hi Peter, because of hard landing you mean...
My best experience is to decrease gradually throttle from 50 feet RA and reaching idle when touching runway with main gear. Anyway no abrupt power kill....not at 50 and not at 30....just smooth decrease.

[Britjet]

The problem with taking the thrust off with one heave is that you destabilise the pitch just when you want to be able to "feel" the elevator response.

As you say - and from the FCTM...
"When the threshold passes under the airplane nose and out of sight, shift the visual
sighting point to the far end of the runway. Shifting the visual sighting point assists
in controlling the pitch attitude during the flare. Maintaining a constant airspeed
and descent rate assists in determining the flare point. Initiate the flare when the
main gear is approximately 30 feet above the runway by increasing pitch attitude
approximately 2° - 3°. This slows the rate of descent.
After the flare is initiated, smoothly retard the thrust levers to idle, and make small
pitch attitude adjustments to maintain the desired descent rate to the runway. A
smooth thrust reduction to idle also assists in controlling the natural nose-down
pitch change associated with thrust reduction. Hold sufficient back pressure on the
control column to keep the pitch attitude constant. A touchdown attitude as
depicted in the figure below is normal with an airspeed of approximately VREF
plus any gust correction. Ideally, main gear touchdown should occur
simultaneously with thrust levers reaching idle."

Simples...

Peter

[FlyingBlue]

Yes Peter, I noticed that the pitch goes down immediately when you cut the throttle...in fact its never done in real world. Handle the Queen smoothly and with care. I found out the right handling regarding the whole auto throttle issue with this document. Actually it is hard to find any document discussing the manual landing with the 744.
Many tutorials simply 'forget' to mention and doing the easy way with just auto land, as it is meant as training device....we want to land manual ;-)

Sjaak