I love those classic Avweb articles! I read many of them when they were first published and enjoyed reading this one again. Too bad Belvoir eliminated the great articles, columns and message boards in favor of news snippets. Allot of learning and discussion used to take place over there. Deakin, Durden, Brown and all the rest. Miss ya guys. Thanks for posting it megan!
As for constant descent profile approaches, they're great...until current wx is approaching mins and the location of the MAP with respect to the rwy makes getting to MDA before the MAP the better plan. NPAs with only circling mins (no straight-in mins published) when a straight-in landing is required or expected comes to mind. Especially problematic is using a CDA when the MAP is located beyond the rwy threshold! Yeah, you could always just land somewhere else but why do that when you can get in safely simply by getting to MDA a little sooner?