Just a quick question. Since I know little to nothing about real procedures, I would like to ask:What is a good average climb rate and descent rate from cruising altitude to approach level?I am using 2500' for climb and 1900'-2000' for descent at around 300kts IAS. I begin slowing to 250 at around 15,000'. Is this anywhere in the 'reality' ballpark?Thanks,Bob

I'm also interested in knowing this...From what I've been told 2500 to 3000 fpm on descent is about right. On a flight back from Melbourne aboard virgin blue flight, we came down from FL380 to 10,000 in about 10 minutes!! Using speed brakes to slow us down. His descent rate didn't really shallow out until we started to turn towards the coast to land on 34L at Sydney. We were running late and from pushback, taxi and climb out I got the feeling the Captain was in a real hurry.

Have a great Day/Night where ever you are! :-wave

http://www.3dflite.com/dac/img/BANNER-soccer.gif Student Pilot - YSBKC152/Tomahawk/Warrior/Archer/Duchess66.3 hrs Total

>Just a quick question. Since I know little to nothing about>real procedures, I would like to ask:>>What is a good average climb rate and descent rate from>cruising altitude to approach level?>>I am using 2500' for climb and 1900'-2000' for descent at>around 300kts IAS. I begin slowing to 250 at around 15,000'.>Is this anywhere in the 'reality' ballpark?After some research, talking to my dad (MD-88 captain), and experience in a Gulfstream simulator...the best way to fly a climb is to set climb power on the throttle (manually) and leave it, then either hand-fly or use VS hold and adjust your climb rate to hold a constant airspeed (280-320 or possibly more, depending on aircraft, and above 10kft of course) and until you intercept mach, then hold that. Doing so approximates the FLCH mode on an autopilot in climb (which will hold power and use climb rate to hold airspeed). There are a couple of freeware panels with this functionality (at least in climb); there's an ERJ "ultimate" package, the Avro/146 panel, an A300 panel, and (supposedly) that nice MD-11 one.Descent works about the same way (except with throttle at idle), but I've found this to lead to excessively high descent rates which scare the pax (in FSP) and it's hard to judge your descent like this without an FMC.

"the best way to fly a climb is to set climb power on the throttle (manually) and leave it, then either hand-fly or use VS hold and adjust your climb rate to hold a constant airspeed (280-320 or possibly more, depending on aircraft, and above 10kft of course) and until you intercept mach, then hold that."I'm sorry but this sounds like Concord procedures... :-lol You can't set climb power manually without holding a set climb rate. If you drop your nose you

Chris, perhaps I misunderstand you but setting a certain level of thrust during climb and controlling speed by pitch is pretty much how it works. The rate of climb depends on a bunch of things but the thrust and indicated airspeed is (more or less) constant, ROC varies.The thing to remember is that you want to reach your cruise level as fast as possible and that

"Descent works about the same way (except with throttle at idle), but I've found this to lead to excessively high descent rates which scare the pax (in FSP) and it's hard to judge your descent like this without an FMC."Your technique is right. However, in most aircraft, there are 2 idle settings - Flight Idle, and Ground Idle. For example, in the DC10 the ground Idle is something around the 20-23% N1 Mark (I forget exactly) but the Flight Idle is 45% N1! (From what I've heard) Either way, the DC10 is an exception, I've noticed PMDG model the flight idle to be about 33%, either way, if you increase your thrust manually a little bit your descent rate will have to be lower as to not pick up speed! Either way, none of these figures are exact but you should be able to fly fine using this technique in the Sim.

Set climb power then control speed with pitch. Thats how we do it in GA and how a friend who used to fly Fokker 50s did aswell.ASI is selected on the autopilot rather than the VSI as a safety precaution. Can you imagine once you pass 10,000 feet, you set your climb power and your VSI for 2,000 fpm. By the time you reach FL180 your speed (depending on aircraft type, weight and several other things) will be very close to a stall!! And this can happen. It's not difficult to get distracted in the cockpit. The ASI climb is a lot safer. The aircraft will simply hold the speed you tell it to hold with the power you have selected. It might not even get you to the altitude you've selected, but atleast it won't stall on you!!One more thing...The autopilot is very stupid at times.... It won't recognise a problem until the trim is all trimmed out. It's only then, that it will disconnect and leave you in a really bad situation! Example of this was given in an incident report of a Metro III that departed YSBK to somewhere out bush. Something happened with the cross-feed, making the aircraft 300kg heavier on the right. The Autopilot simply trimmed itself to adjust for the unbalanced weight on the wings. The pilot was unaware of any issues until the autopilot reached its maximum aileron trim setting, disconnected itself, and lead the Metro into a 7,000 feet spiral dive!!!Nasty!!

Have a great Day/Night where ever you are! :-wave

http://www.3dflite.com/dac/img/BANNER-soccer.gif Student Pilot - YSBKC152/Tomahawk/Warrior/Archer/Duchess66.3 hrs Total

As stated before, climb is as simple as "Set climb power, maintain climb speed". Usually 250 below FL100 and then around 300ish depending on aircraft and cost index above. Climb, like take off, is simply brute force over ignorance, set the power and stop the IAS (or Mach later on) going in the red.Descent is a bit more tricky. Each airline will be subtly different but my employer's Standard Operating Procedures state that we should try to fly the aircraft in a constant descent from top of drop until about 1000ft radio. The FMGC gives us an estimate for the TOD and miles to run but when you are being given vectors it's of little use. You have to estimate how many track miles to run and then work out in your head how things are progressing energy wise. Of course sometimes ATC change the plan and your track miles may suddenly increase (wind off the rate of descent) or, more often, decrease (speedbrakes out).At altitude, the initial descent is often flown at flight idle with the pitch controlling speed (usually similar speeds to the climb).To answer your question though, the speeds you've chosen are about right, fly those and adjust your rate of descent to achieve what you want and you won't be far off.Hope this helps,Ian

A couple of questions about descents in real-world "big iron":In his excellent book on flying the Boeing 700 series sims, Capt. Mike Ray mentions in the section on descents titled "GET DOWN - GET DIRTY" the method of extending the landing gear in conjunction with speed brakes at or below VLO (in his example 270 KTS) to radically change the descent rate when necessary.That's a major configuration change, noisy, and requires a steeper attitude, so I don't imagine this is used very often. Is this procedure allowed by the employers of any ATPs reading this thread? If so, when would you use gear for a descent to 10K? Emergencies or unusual situations? I can't believe it's SOP.I do recall DC-8 crews on flights I've been on using in-flight reverse thrust (on the inboard engines only?) in addition to speed brakes to expedite descent. Are any other transports certified for reverse thrust at altitude?

Climb is done with autothrottles set to climb N1/EPR power and pitch for desired climb speed.Descent can be done many differnt ways. If you are using an FMS aircraft you will have a VNAV path. That path is computed at power to idle. This keeps you high and fuel efficient as long as possible. After your first altitude constraint such as those found on arrivals it will compute a path from one constraint to the next. Without VNAV a common way to do a descent is compute 3 miles per 1000ft. To make that work you will usually have over 2000fpm descent going. Your required rate of descent will depend on your ground speed. If you have no altitude constraints a good rule of thumb is to be at 10,000ft AGL 30NM from the airport.As far as the DC-8 using reverse in the descent I have no first hand knowledge. I have hear when they re-engine them with the CFM-56 engines there is a lot residual thrust at idle so they are allowed to put two into reverse to help the descent. I would guess they use the inboards because if they don't deploy or retract coordinated you would get uneven thrust from side to side and the inboards would have less of an asymetric effect.

Putting the gear down early is a very good way of keeping things under control when you find yourself high. Speedbrakes are much less effective at lower speeds (<250kts) which is the kind of speed you will be at on the intermediate approach. Most airliners produce a large amount of residual thrust at idle and are very slippery. We normally work on 10nm to go from 300kts to about 210. If you want to lose altitude as well, it's simply not going to happen, do one, then the other (i.e. dive the alt off then slow, or slow then descend as quick as you can with that low speed).Three places spring to mind : Madrid, Geneva and Zurich.Madrid on southerly configurations (fortunately the less used). We come over the mountains (high, obviously) and then need to get down quick to establish on the 18 ILS. ATC will invariably cut numerous track miles off you everytime you change frequency. Things look great talking to Madrid, by the time you're talking to the final approach controller you will be way too high. If you are heavy and maybe there is a tailwind, or at least not a decent headwind, you will definitely find yourself with too much energy (mainly potential). An early selection of the gear works wonders in getting the speed back and/or setting up a good rate of descent to ensure you find yourself nicely established in time and don't scare anyone (particularly the Captain, he makes loads of noise when he's not happy :-) and some of them scare easily, it is his neck on the line after all)Geneva and Zurich both suffer from high terrain close to the airport and hence the same thing applies. It's rare to have the gear down above FL100 but I've put it down around FL80, I think that was a Zurich where we went from 35 miles to touchdown (with a tailwind) to about 20 in a few minutes (ATC changed the order they wanted us to approach). That was a definite gear down, spoiler out, flight idle, speed as high as they'll let us to lose the energy so we stand a cat in hells chance of getting the speed back while going down the ILS.Amongst crews, these type of approaches are unofficially called "Screaming *******" approaches, as that's what both of you are doing most of the way down - perhaps "screaming" is a bit dramatic, muttering at least.With regards to reverse thrust in the descent, I think that's pretty rare these days, I'm sure there are some aircraft that can do it but in most it is prohibited. I remember hearing that the Trident used to be allowed to use full reverse on the number 2 (centre) engine. I hope this helps,Ian

Very informative, thank you. :D

Have a great Day/Night where ever you are! :-wave

http://www.3dflite.com/dac/img/BANNER-soccer.gif Student Pilot - YSBKC152/Tomahawk/Warrior/Archer/Duchess66.3 hrs Total

Guess the conclusion is:For climbs, use climb power and adjust speed with pitch.For descends, use idle whenever possible, and depending on the requirements, add to that everything which produces drag (speedbrakes, gear, flaps, maybe reverse thrust? ;-) ).One question still comes to my mind:Since the cabin pressure controller works with a certain amount of V/S, and maybe it's possible to produce a dive with high V/S with some planes, is it possible that the differential pressure exceeds the allowed range? I for my part would always have an eye on the cabin pressure gauges...Oh, one more question: does it make a difference to first dive and then slow down or do it the other way round?Happy landings ("sooner or later, they all come down again")!Andreas

For climb use max climb thrust and get the V/S needed to hold the speed. 250kts below FL100 and 300-330kts above then adjust the V/S as appropriate.For decent take the half of you ground speed and multiply with 10, i.e. 400kts GS sould give you -2000fpm, easy? for the Decent distance take the altitude in FL and divide with 3 and ad 10nm for speed reduction. example: You need to intercept the ILS 12miles out at 3000feet and you are at FL370 this means you need to bleed of 34000feet. 340/3 = 114nm + 10nm = 124nm prior to the FAF.have fun,Martin

Thanks to all for your responses. Sounds like I need to change my attitude..so to speak.Cheers,Bob