Another one that I do hear occasionally is "large delays lower levels available" on first contact. Makes a HUGE difference to fuel and workload to level off at 300 rather than blast up to FLRidiculous only to come back down.
That makes me happy to hear. Us enroute controllers don't have any influence on delay, but if we can make your life easier when delays get crap, all the better I guess. Although we toe a bit of a fine line with delays, if we get in early before everything else has settled, the chance of it changing is pretty high (especially if they go to LAHSO at short notice
). But everything is pretty sturdy at about 250-200 from ML, so I tend to leave the smaller delays until then. If the delays are 10+, some of us will jump in early to give a time before props level out or to the jets with a "min speed, lower levels available." I've seen plenty of jets with enough time absorb the whole 10+ mins when that's done. It makes everyone life easier I hope.
Is there an amount of delay that you would like to be given the option for lower levels? Delays are pretty crap, not much we can do to change them, but we can at least make it a bit easier for you guys.