I take those points and that has give me something to think about, The sought of reduction in speed we are talking about is decending at the turbulence penetration speed in clear weather , which is a whole 70KTS IAS slower than we used to with crews in europe. For me this is like shooting an ant with a shot gun approach...so as you say dont create conflict on the flightdeck but at the same time its like why dont we just fly around fully configured and we will never do a wheels up. It sure is an inefficient way to fly around - alas its a case methinnks if I dont make this extra effort then I probably wont last long - so there is my choice I guess
DD