StarSailor79

Exactly. Off course they are not dangerous, they are fitted to be used and can be used. But only when absolutely needed, otherwise you burn more fuel unnecceseraly. There are cases where ATC will require you to descend fast, you have to use speedbrakes to stay on glide path in these cases. And as tf51d said it has to do with company policy and/or pilot preference. Autobrakes while landing is another exaple: some pilots use the minimum autobrakes neccesary to bring the a/c to a halt while trying to minimise brake wear (and cost of maintenance). There are other pilots who brake like there s no tommorow so that they use less runway for safety.

Using the speedbrake to deccelerate is not a good practise, you spill valuable energy and stress the aircraft in the long term. At least this is what my best mate says who is a real world A330 pilot. What I do is this: try to start my descent from climb flight level as late as possible. Cut the throttle to idle and start descending until 11000 Feet, which is where ATC usually instructs me to. After this, level off and let speed die to below 250, so that I can start descending below 10000ft. I try to use the flaps as late as possible too, around 3-4000ft, just before final. My target is to try to descent from climb altitude to runway using no speedbrake, late flaps and as less throttle as possible. This is what good energy management is about according to this friend of mine