Energy management on approach with A321s
So arrivals in LAX and SFO often end up with ATC keeping you high and fast.
Unfortunately, the A321 seems to be particularly bad and slowing down and descending.
If ATC has you at 250kts, and you're descending on the glide path, its very hard to slow down, stay on glide path. Use of speed brakes can be counterproductive as the VLS hook rises so high...
Thoughts on the best way to deal with these arrivals?
Slow down, dirty up, and then try to catch up with the glide path which you had to abandon while slowing and configuring?
Extending the landing gear early seems to help but still it seems very difficult to go down and slow down, enough to arrive at 1000', configured and on speed.
Anyone have any rules of thumb regarding when you have to slow down/configure... i.e. by 15 NM (as an example), you need to be at speed X, config Y, Z feet....
if you don't do this by 15NM (as an example) then you have to configure out of sequence with gear (as an example)
if you don't do this by 12NM (as an example) then there is no way to configure with the altitude, speed that needs to be lost
Some days the arrivals in those airports are fine, and other days they are a pain in the @ss...
What type of reaction have you gotten from ATC if you tell them you need to slow down (earlier than they planned you to)?