Originally Posted by
sonicbum
The PM will then use the MCDU as needed.
Apparently the fleet office is quite happy with the statistics of this SOP. There have been in the past events where the crew mainly changed from DES to V/S and that lead to the troubles. The mitigation strategy was to prohibit the use of V/S when descending/climbing "via" a STAR/SID and the use of step FCU altitude selections. My bet is that the latter will be removed soon as, again, it does not make sense if things are done properly from the beginning.
Man. I sure hope nobody from my airline management is reading this. This is exactly the sort of stuff they come up with that leaves us wondering why we’re flying the thing like it’s a 707.