Icepac,
You don't need to be in "autoland" for autothrottles to, well, autothrottle. Depending on your vertical mode selected they'll either go all the way to max allowable power, idle power or maintain your airspeed. Sometimes they do a little of each, again depending on the mode.
I understand but didn't think of posting every single situation in which throttles might have been retarded right before the pilot took command resulting in him having been "handed" a bird with a lower power setting than optimal.
