Exactly right, in Europe and the States it is very very unlikely that in the normal course of things you will have to deviate from the green line. This means that the new pilot has time to 'think' about the aircraft and what it is doing. I am still unsure how much training value is involved in a Melbourne - Launceston sector where you end up with a cross between a DME/GPS and Visual arrival off the back of a 25 minute sector where you haven't even had the change to brief. Airbus went a long way to make flying the aircraft simple but when you then throw in stupid SOP's like 250kts by 5000 and 210kts by 3000 you start confusing the situation. I would argue that the airbus was not designed to be flown in Airspace where descents are interrupted by wacko CTA steps that mean instead of flying it like a jet transport aircraft should be flown you have to dirty up just to achieve an unrealistic profile whilst achieving unrealistic speeds. The question perhaps that should be asked is why are these high performance aircraft mixing it with GA at non-controlled sh*t pot little airports whilst trying to fly the thing like a big 172.