Once during a recurrency session we had finished all of the requirements for the recurrency and had about 30 minutes left until the session was over. The sim instructor said that he wanted us to try something, it was not part of the training and it would not counted against us if we failed to perform the maneuver. My partner and I said sure, why not.
The instructor put us over the Outer Maker for 25R at LAX. Speed was 250kts IAS, configuration clean and had us at 10,000 feet. Then he said, land straight in, no turns and then he unfroze the sim.
I made the landing, about a third way down the runway, but we still made it.
The first thing I did was raise the spoilers, at the same time I called gear down and then told my partner in crime in the right seat to put the flaps down on speed all the way to flaps 30. I could see that we still needed more drag, so I reversed all three engines. That did the trick. The IVSI was of course pegged full down. The tricky part was the timing to come out of reverse to slow the rate of descent to a manageable level prior to touch down.
Then my partner and I swapped seats and he actually had to stow the spoilers and add thrust to get to the runway, but he cheated. The first thing he did was go into reverse, then spoilers, gear and so on.
Now I really don't know if that would work in the actual aircraft and I for one never wanted to be in the position to have to find out. Course we did bend the rules a bit, like you cannot have the spoilers out and any flaps extension at all and it is certainly not recommended to deploy the reversers in flight.
But it was fun.
However, the answer to the question is with flaps 40, flight idle and gear down you peg the IVSI, so I really cannot tell you what the actual rate of descent is.
Oh, we were authorized to remove the flaps 40 block for operational reasons and had to do so on a few occasions. A couple of things on flaps 40 landings, one is that it takes a lot and I mean a lot of power to stay on the glide path with 40 degrees of flaps, when you pull the power off you land even if you are still ten feet in the air, it feels as if the aircraft drops straight down and you don't use up much runway landing.
I really enjoyed my 7,000 of hours flying the 727. When I win the big lottery I'm going to buy one to run around the world in.
