No it’s not required... only on auto lands...i miscommunicated. I have noticed it seems to be standard at UAL to turn it off every landing... wish that was the case here...makes for very degraded flying skills to let fifi do all the work (and a mediocre job at that) and chop the levers when it says retard

You can do it either way. Pilot’s choice as it should be. Of course the retard call out is an autoland function only and is totally meaningless otherwise. Guys that listen for that call out as their “cue” to chop the power don’t understand the system and are acting like slaves to automation. Manage the energy state as appropriate. Don’t listen for some dumb call out with a French accent.

And for that reason, I pretty much always landed the 319 flaps 3...

I flew the airplane for a couple of years and rarely used the auto thrust on approaches, except when required for autoland. I think what some are missing is on the Bus the throttles don’t automatically come to idle in the flare. And one can’t really “chop” the power on a Bus, the thrust programming will always smoothly reduce the power to idle no matter how fast one pulls the thrust levers to idle.

With that written, I do remember the airplane required very little “technique” other than just smoothly pulling the thrust levers to idle as one held the nose up for landing. Unless the programming has changed the Bus actually pitches the nose down (yes even in “manual” flight) in the landing phase to “force” the pilot to pitch up and “flare.”

Of course things change and someone will correct me here in the internet.

https://i.gyazo.com/54556d82f0b2f171...80f9848f36.png.