In my experience, it is the norm on the jets to keep the gear up until about 1500 to 2000 feet. Places like FFM will ask you to keep 170 to the marker (about 1400 feet if memory serves) that's a bit of a trial in a light 747-400 let alone a smaller jet. The limitation is the stabilised approach criteria of any given operator - even 170 at 1400ft allows stability by 500ft though. I don't know about the Airbusses, but Boeings and MD's are quite capable of slowing down sufficiently to allow 160 to 4 miles and the gear to be lowered at around 1500ft (on some turbo-props you can keep 200kts to the marker and be gear down stable at 1000ft, now that was flying!
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