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Old 25th April 2007 | 13:33
  #19 (permalink)  
A37575
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Joined: Apr 2005
Posts: 1,415
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From: Australia
Flew the 737 Classic for a German operator long time ago. The F/O was female with 500 hours who relied totally on FMC to descend. One crystal clear night over Europe the view was just magnificent and the track from 100 miles out was almost in line with duty runway. Well before top of descent I asked her (the F/O) would she like to try a profile descent of the sort described by 411A in his excellent post. Three times the height plus 10 DME.

She baulked and was quick to tell me this was non-standard procedure as the standard was to rely on the FMC. I admitted this was true but that on the other hand to be able to judge the profile using DME versus height was a useful skill. She had never heard of this technique.

To cut a long story short I promised her faithfully not to tell a soul in the company that she had actually hand flown a descent profile using basic skills.
So she hand flew the 3Xht+10 and the result was a beautifully flown approach straight in to Hamburg from 115 miles out culminating in a perfect flare and touch-down. After the pax had departed she turned to me with a lovely smile and thanked me for what she described as a taste of REAL flying - but then urged me never to tell a soul that she had flown a non-standard procedure...
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