Intruder, it's a Eurothing, for noise abatement. How to plan your TOD is irrelevant for the question.
Think of it as extending the ILS 20-30 nm, that you start out with 250 knots, and you have to configure without a level segment.
Not irrelevant at all. VNAV on the 744 and 748 ideally does exactly that. Think of it as extending the ILS 100-130 nm, that you start out with Mach 0.82, and you configure without a level segment.
Does Airbus not do the same thing? Seems they oughtta, since they live right in the middle of the Eurothing...