I can't see the point of a DME arrival followed by circling in a jet or high performance turbo-prop
In these days where there is a lot of pressure to reduce costs, the point can be saving around 4 minutes flying time per approach. At regional ports it is not a case of dropping onto 10 mile final and everyone doing the same speeds, you have to fit in with a large range of operations.
Priorities basically state that "first to use the airspace wins", except that "this can be varied should significant economic benefit to a number of other aircraft occur" In every busy traffic sequence, there is at least one aircraft that is the key to it being a good day or a bad day. This is normally the one that has to fly an approach against the normal traffic flow. Solution sometimes is to take that one out and put it to the end of the sequence.
In regard to flying the DME arrival to the minima and circling, one day the gods will be unkind and all the gee whizz bits will not be available. It is then the PIC (and the SLF) will be thankful that they are proficient at hand flying in the circuit.
I have seen A320's fly DME arrival to minima with circling for the runway. Is it a better aircraft than the B73's in these situations
