Hi!
Our airline has a requirement of less than 1500 fpm in the last 1000' of a climb/descent, so as not to set off other people's TCAS (we don't have it yet).
Most of the airplanes I fly don't have any type of speed mode on the autopilot, and the ones that have them need to be less than 500 fpm, generally, to capture the altitude.
The airplanes that don't have any speed mode often need a 200-300 fpm or less rate of change to capture correctly (by manually selecting the altitude mode) and many of them won't do it at all on the first try and have to be re-set.
When we convert to RVSM standards we'll get new autopilots that will work well.
CLiff
KGRB