Originally Posted by
Centaurus
I dislike some of these so called Standard Calls. If for example the airspeed is higher or lower than the planned airspeed the call by the PM should be "Speed high or "Speed low." Unfortunately there will always be the eager beaver PM calling a 2 or 3 knot difference from planned airspeed which can be very irritating. Sink rate is another call that needs clarifying. If the sink rate is abnormal for the stage of flight path a sensible call would be for example Sink Rate 1200.
I don't know how well are your company SOPs defined, in ours we have something on the line of "VS is limited to the altitude difference to go", e.g 5000ft to go, max VS 5000fpm, 3000ft to go, 3000fpm and so on, other than that a "Rate" call from the PM is to be expected.
For an approach, goes the same way. If it is not briefed then the "Sink Rate" call-out is to be expected. Speaking of that, I understand that on a steep approach, even if the PF forgets to mention that the VS is going to be higher than 1000 fpm, I will understand that is normal and refrain from calling "sink rate" all the way down. Similarly, I will wait 2-3 sec before doing the call of sink rate on a normal descent approach, and generally I wait a tad longer the higher we are.