Many thanks. Clearly some variance is SOP
Thanks for all helpful suggestions so far.
it does appear that some have never heard of this item ,some say it used to be a checklist item and others advising 'just do what they want '. I will, of course follow the latter.
Upon further reflection. We weren't event doing any FLAP3 landings.! We were doing Config FULL approaches. I wonder if, for challenging approaches (Innsbruck is an example ), this could be related. Maybe he wanted to avoid spurious GPWS alerts in the FLAP 3 config ? (I.e. just before FULL). Not sure, just thinking aloud.