Originally Posted by
giggitygiggity
The second half of that aside. Is 35k to 10k in 13 mins that incredible? 25,000 ft to lose in 13 mins, ~2000ft/min?
It is surely on the high side. Would have been OK if they had space to dissipate the energy for the final approach. But with that descent rate even with engines at idle you will arrive at 10k on the high side of the speed range. And in this case at 10 kft they were so close to the airport that they had to even further steepen the approach. So looking at that graph it indicates that they probably started the descent a few minutes too late for the given circumstances. For whatever reason. Possibly they were expecting a holding pattern or a much wider circuit?