Originally Posted by
rudestuff
I don't know about Airbus, but in the Boeing I fly you can put the gear down in cruise up to Mach .82 /270 knots.
I've never heard of anyone having a gear problem on departure then climbing to cruise altitude and waiting an hour to fix the issue, so it sounds like the steward was talking out of they/their ass...
Did exactly that during one flight. Discovered during the flight that the computed fuel burn on the OFP was way too high and that we would land overweight, so we dropped the gear (same limits you quote), and burned a ton extra in just a few minutes and then raised it again. Not a gear problem, just a flight planning system getting confused by the same trip number on two consecutive sectors, tankering and thus leading us to have too much fuel on board.