A320/A321 energy management and configuration
Dear colleagues,
I’ve just ended my Line training on A320/A321, I’d like to ask your opinion about some thoughts about energy management. In my airline we are encouraged to use OP Des and V/S for descent planning, in order to be able to compute ourself.
My question are:
/ how many miles do you add in order to decelerate? Normally I use 3xAltitude (even if some colleagues suggest 3xdistance as this gives a shallowe profile) plus 5 miles from 250. I see this rule works very good and is even conservative if I can descend all the way down at 250, level off and decel, configure.
if I have some altitude constraints where I have to decel quite early to 210, I see I have some problems as then the gradient is very shallow and soon I go above profile…
/ If I have an intermediate altitude constraint say 20nm at 6000 how can I know how much to decel? I see in the same scenario colleagues going straight to Sspeed and F1, others maintain 250 as they say that 20nm at 6000 has its margin and descending at 250 is better as far from GDot (best lift to drag ratio) so descent is steeper.
Thanks for your help