This thread has drifted miles of course and that is partly my fault. Let me explain why I fly high speed all the time. I work for a (in)famous European airline that has zero respect for me or any of my colleagues. I am based in a awful base in southern Europe where the company regularly leaves the block times at least 10 minutes shy of what they should be due to a 20 minute taxi that they don't and won't take into account. As I get paid by the scheduled block hour I have no intention whatsoever of flying ECON speeds and get shafted once again by these useless shower of clowns. I am a FO and I always ask the skipper first if he is ECON or high speed. If he says ECON I respect him and do it his way but I would say 80% tell me to fly as fast as I want as long as I don't break anything
I have even had some Captains bark at me for NOT doing 330/.81. But then again if we were paid by the actual time and the airline treated us with a bit of respect we would gladly respect their fuel policy and do that wonderful 273 KTS descent
