Well, I've once been on a jump-seat fam flight with a major European low cost airline, and as we were approaching my home aerodrome, my colleague working at APP position told the crew to slow down - there were apparently three 'straight in' arrivals before us and we were coming from the opposite, downwind direction. The plan was that, with some early speed reduction, we would fly some standard 7-10nm ILS downwind with no delay as no. 4.
Anyway, the captain stated that 'we cannot go down and slow down' and set the AP knobs to 20-30kt faster than instructed (instructions was something like 250->220->180->160kt). We ended up at 22-23nm final and made ATCO job much more complicated as the aircraft didn't slow down as he had expected. I wonder if they really saved any fuel that way.
Last edited by samotnik; 23rd Jul 2013 at 20:23.