No offence taken whatsoever. I happen to appreciate the info.
Your requests are all valid but keep in mind that some of those procedures are not known to us except from experience flying into a particular airport. For example, the time to call for ATC clearance.... not written in our OM-C nor is it on the Jepps plate I have in front of me for OMAA (granted these plates are out of date) Then again we just changed to LIDO so maybe that info is written there. Although it is pretty standard in OMAA.
Clearance for push.... you are right.
Approaching the runway, usually we only get the 'cabin ready' shortly before reaching the hold point or sometimes even later. We are doing checks, preparing for takeoff etc, trying not to taxi on the grass (haha) and if the Purser does not tell us of an expected delay due to pax issues, then we expect them to be ready upon reaching. Occasionally we only become aware of a delay once we have stopped at the hold point.
A question, speed control is in effect until exactly what point in the following scenario? On downwind assigned 220kts... can we slow after base turn or have to wait until cleared for approach? (assuming nothing else is said in relation to speed control)
What does the acronym GMC stand for again?
At the gate we are very busy with our briefs, programming and we have about 5 different people with different priorites popping into the flightdeck, continually breaking up our normal sequence of events.
Then at other airports we have to remember to request the PDC at a certain time before pushback (which is an educated guess at times), or we have to relate different info to different ATC's when requesting clearance, or push/start clearance. Sometimes there are up to 3 different frequencies involved as well. It is all quite easy when at home base but when only visiting an airport infrequently and any procedure is different than the norm, then there is more potential for us to mess it up.
Isn't the requested FL on the flight plan you receive for us? Just wondering.
Recently I requested the 'expected' SID about 15 minutes before push. Then when we requested clearance, they gave us a different SID. This added several minutes to our reprogramming and rebrief, just when the Engineer was handing over the tech log, the LMC change came in on the loadsheet and the PA had to be made. I'm not bitching, just trying to point out that our errors, that probably drive you crazy, are sometimes a direct result of other factors. I know it is no excuse but it is an explanation.