Originally Posted by
pineteam
The First One. It’s « Alt Blue » not « FL300 blue ». NightStop and GetTheQrh, You can not omit the « ALT » call out! This is a really important FMA call and I would be surprised if your SOP says otherwise. For example: If you are at FL 200. And you are clear to descend to FL 140 and you accidently use VS+1500’. The « ALT » blue won’t be displayed! The missing « ALT » Blue will be a fast trigger that’s something is wrong. By FCOM, any change in the FMA must be called and with his color when applicable (Blue/Magenta). So skipping it would be a violation of Airbus SOP.
The idea is good and honest, although misapplied I am afraid. ALT blue is not called according to Airbus. It is unnecessary workload, reduces time to think and such would be safety detrimental.
The Airbus SOP does not have provisions to trap errors of people setting +1000 and not notice when they actually wanted to descend with -1000. I have flown with metrics only for 10 years and not China, just west half mother Russia. Wonder how much more complicated compared to SVO do DME (some of the traffic speaks in local language there) it really gets. Maybe your metric setting procedures are overly complex to begin with? They do not need to be ... stay safe.
10 clearances is nowhere near too many, but I understand you mean they are only 600 or meters apart and to run the flightdeck drill is like a managing a circus in climb, trying to avoid abrupt ATHR changes and excessive VS rates in packed airspace. VS is the right knob to pull and even that does not bring very nice results, while thickening the soup even more due to extra talking. So many times I thought taking the TLs to 60%N1 (ATHR LIM) would be the most elegant way.