I always did that too, in my 12 years on the 757/767, worked great. But when I went to the 777, they were quite adamant about NOT turning off the A/T's, ever, as mentioned above, it's the new Boeing Way. I do keep my hands on top of them, and I do override them at times, either pushing up when getting slow, or pulling back if getting high/hot.

A friend of mine also on the 777 said he did turn off the A/T's once for a visual landing. He said it was the hardest landing of his career! :eek:

After he told me that (about 5 years ago), I really started paying attention to exactly what the A/T's were doing in the flare, both on hand flown landings and auto-lands. They almost always come fwd about an inch for a little extra thrust as you round out at about 20'.

I'm pretty sure they are tied into the radio altimeter and VVI, as well as the airspeed, but I'm no Boeing engineer so I'm not sure exactly what they are looking at in the last 100'. It does do some of the smoothest auto-lands I've ever seen though, so it's doing something right! ;)

One thing that will ruin a nice smooth hand flown landing though, is the sudden pop-up of the auto-speed brakes, before all 12 main tires are on the pavement, so on my landings, I usually hold the speed brake handle and let it come back slowly, at about half speed, vs. let it pop up and drop us the last 3'.

Is it because of the long spool up time on those big 777 fans?

Not my experience at all with the 777 and auto throttles. I almost always turned them off on a visual. I did however turn off the arm switches which will provide you wake up in certain circumstances.

I don't believe it is a poor design because the entire idea of FLCH is to pitch for speed. Had the autopilot been engaged, they never would have stalled. He put the airplane into a pitch for airspeed mode and didn't hold the required pitch. They also failed miserably at basic airmanship and CRM/TEM.

Really? I fly a lot of VNAV approaches, especially on visuals (a visual backed up by the RNAV approach).

Really dude, that's why my company put a couple quick review pages in our QRH (Quick Reference Handbook), because some of us don't shoot them that often.

Remember we have our quick reference cards in the FAT for everything non-ILS to make all the non-ILS stuff a non-event. Other airlines may not have the same handy items. Additionally, with the VNAV to the feather protocol that we have, we run that stuff even on ILS's a lot more than other carriers may.

It's strange at the least with the hybrid design of the 777. It poses as a super modern airliner, but yet in more than a few modes than other super modern airliners will just let you go there. "Wake-up" is a stall protection that they are trained is there. 777 pilots in most arenas are trained to never turn the A/T off. The A/T column on the FMA was green and the saturated pilots assumed it was active I'm sure.

It was a combination of poor airmanship, poor systems management/awareness, poor energy management, and the strange no wake-up in FLCH sure didn't help matters.

All of the above, automation should help to prevent all of the above not enhance the failures.

Should have been, I did NOT turn off the arms switches.....