Originally Posted by
john_tullamarine
There is a point.
Do you know what your aircraft can do when ATC holds you dreadfully high for whatever reason .. and then asks for a near-impossible descent crossing requirement ? The 733, for example, goes down real fine, dirty, at one nautical per thousand .. Do you know what maximum height you can overfly onto downwind for a simple circuit and landing while tracking a normal line over the ground ? Again, the 733 does this real fine over the top at 10-11,000 feet - often a useful technique coming into Cairns from the west with a strong westerly-caused circuit turbulence. Do you know what height you can enter downwind and do a normal-ish sort of circuit. On the Electra, coming northbound into Sydney in the wee hours, with a displaced threshold for noise abatement FL300 abeam the upwind threshold worked pretty fine. And so on ...
And this was, of course, sans FMC, GPS and other JB kits. Sure we had to work hard at getting proficient and maintaining proficiency ... but knowledge, work and practice are the main weapons in the armoury of flying skills ... all within the limitations of then-SOP restrictions.
I would love to have this kind of inputs. I've been on the line only for less than a year now and ATC kept me very high only and then vectored me for approach only once. Abeam the airport slowing down to 210 kt at FL90, I extended flaps 5 and deployed speedbrakes and all worked out very well for a stable final to RW 02 in BCN at 170 kts.
Of course, I currently don't fly pax so I am not sure if that would've been uncomfortable for them and CC's.