just heard another discussion on the radio about noise plagued people around an airport and once more heard the song about the all solving solution: clean approach.
am working for an airline with strict stabilisation criteria and remember the criteria for such a clean approach given by stockholm airport: maximum 2 nm level flight.
what happens if anybody makes a level flight at minimum altitude fully configured will not be what sleeping people below want to hear and generally think that the clean approach concept does not really help as long as we pilots tend to be conservative (to add a year or two to the pilot time in just that company...)
here is my idea throwing in experience on the 320 on approaches down to 1000ft on a 5degrees and then changing back to 3degrees but asking you about your equipment to prove correctness of following statement:
most aircraft could use a 4 degrees glideslope with enough thrust for safety reasons when in an available final configuration but with less thrust than we use now and if last 5000ft (
tbd) are flown in this final configuration stress levels will fall drastically not only for people below but also for pilots, especially, when tailwindlimits above 10kts as allowed nowadays on some airbus aircraft are cut back to 10kts to avoid idle landings...
(by the way, why not allow idle landings with an even steeper glideslope and decide at around 500ft based on runway conditions and GROUNDspeed about landing or go around - just another idea, not the thread!)