A320 Selected descent
 

Hello,

Today I've just flown with a Luton captain. He told me that in his opinion descending with managed descent in most european airports is not the best way. For him, as most of the time we are radar vectored, given shortcut or speed restrictions, well before the speed limits point, the best way is descending with V/S, height x3 +10. Then you adjust descent according to constraints. In this way it's easier to comply with ATC request and most important you never finish to be high in case of shortcuts or something else.

I was used to use managed des most of the times at the beginning, what do you think about that?

I us V/S to start the descent followed by either DES with selected speed (to stop the annoying habit the Airbus has of reducing speed by 20kts) or OP DES below about 33000 (above that the pressurisation is a bit too inconsistent when the engines actually come back to IDLE with OP DES).

Many ways to skin a cat.....

Managed if you can. "Let the plane take the strain".