Awesome info, thanks Snail!!
I’m curious - I know there’s probably no straight answer as it depends on each flight situation, but in general, once you are in manual, are you still setting the speed based on the flaps settings, or does it differ (significantly or in nuances) from what the automatic thrust / speed would do?
My experience is speed is we usually set our speed according to ATC or published approach requirements. For instance the IAF waypoint may state max 230kts on the chart, or ATC may request 200kts, etc etc. The appropriate flaps are then selected to comply with the requested speed.
It’s becoming quite standard for airports to require 180kts till 7nm, and 150-160kts to 4nm, so we configure to comply with these requirements. Sometimes that can mean being at 10-15kts above the current flap manoeuvre speed.
Well I don’t want to hijack the thread talking about the 737. When we fly manually in any airplane, the colleague becomes a voice activated autopilot or rather a voice activated flight director. When flying manually the pilot monitoring will set up the MCP commanded by the pilot flying to get correct flight director commands and bugs.
I like to command about 180kts from before turning final at about 11nm (with flaps 1 or 5) and keep it like that until maybe 7/8nm. Then I’ll bug the Flaps5 speed and let the airplane decelerate slowly. If it’s not doing it I’ll take out one more flap (flaps 10 in my case) or help it with the speedbrake depending on the tailwind. At 5nm I want to be at a speed below the F15 speed limitation so I can configure at 4nm or 5nm. The main goal is to respect the approach sequence of the other traffics and to avoid as much as possible for the engines to spool up. The greenest thing to do is to fly the approach (the last 10 minutes of it) on completely idle thrust until the final flap config.
Ah - Captain Ingo!
Good videos, but this guy really needs to smoke a pipe - like some real North Sea captain.
Wooooooh a two hour video only about the hydraulics!!
Such videos showing not only flight procedures but also showing the technology and hidden details about a plane are the best!!!
There is still an aircraft engineer deep inside me you know… 
Pilot is only a secondary task *ggg
Apologize to everyone, for a split second I must have forgotten we are in the Fenix thread… 
Even more so, thanks for the valuable info!
Does Fenix plan to enhance the cockpit layout choices a little bit?
One can choose all extra instruments as analogue gauges with analogue artificial horizon gauge - or no extra instruments at all and a digital artificial horizon.
I would love to have all the extra instruments active, but a digital artificial horizon.
Is this an impossible configuration that has never been implemented in any A320 cockpit?
When were these analogue instruments left of the ECAM removed and replaced by only one digital artificial horizon?
Most Airbusses don´t have these round analogue gauges:
There are airline options in the EFB. At this point it’s worth educating yourself a little on the plane either by user manual or YouTube videos… you’re asking a lot of questions there are answers for… in detail too.
Did a flight with the Fenix yesterday and not sure if I missoperated anything or it’s a bug…
CONTEXT:
Stabiliced approach, NAV, managed speed, already at green dot speed. Eventually, I set flap 1 and the aircraft dind’t automatically slow down to “S” speed by itself as it was supposed to do in managed mode. Why? I dind’t manually activated the APPR phase in the MCDU, but I passed the “D” (deceleration) pseudo waypoint, which is supposed to activate it automatically.
The a/c kept green dot speed until I decided to manually intervene about 5/7 miles from the airport in order to land (I didn’t have time to do a GA).
Lke I said, there are airline options in the EFB adding or removing an DDRMI below the backup artificial horizon, and giving the choice between a set of either a digital artificial horizon (with no other round instruments), or analogue instruments including an analogue artificial horizon and an analogue altimeter in feet and meters.
There is no answer yet in a random YouTube video because I wanted to know when the first backup digital artificial horizon was installed in Airbus cockpits plus having had the analogue instruments removed.
Was this done to make the cockpit more clean and minimalistic looking, or to remove all old looking analogue gauges because they seem “outdated”?
And I wanted to know if Fenix plans to add more cockpit personalization options later on. I would like to have a digital backup artificial horizon and the rest of the backup gauges as analogue gauges.
This is strange, even when flying fully by hand but having only switched on autothrust and “managed IAS speed” the Airbus should reduce the speed according to the flap settings.
Whenever I do a manual landing I set the autothrust to 225 knots with manual autothrust. When the speed is reduced from 250 to 225 I set to flaps 1 (slats only) and switch to managed speed mode that removes my IAS setting on the display and shows only *--------- with a yellow dot.
The autothrust continues to reduce the speed automatically based on the red speed band limits that become more visible on the PFD when the flaps are released.
Upgrades and changes are never done purely to make it look better or newer. There has to be a cost or operational benefit.
Mechanical instruments all require significantly more maintenance and are less reliable, than solid state electronic equivalents. For this reason, almost all western airliners have replaced the mechanical standby instruments with electronic ones. It makes no sense to only replace the attitude indicator, yet keep the other mechanical instruments, especially as almost every standby AI also has speed/altitude/heading indicating abilities.
For this reason, the equipment fit out you’re hoping for is simply not realistic, and has most likely never been available in the real aircraft.
You can download the A320 FMC manual here:
https://www.smartcockpit.com/docs/Smiths_Thales_A_1_0_1_FM_Pilot_Guide.pdf
Although it is 703 pages, it is actually pretty accessible, and is definitely worth a read for doing the more complex flight plan changes etc.
Dramatic but not sure if it’s helpful, and certainly not always true. The entire purpose of an airport with a STAR or SID is to publish the expected arrival and departure flows, respectively. Yes, you need to use whatever tools you have to determine how and when to descend, but on a published STAR, there is not a requirement to “get clearance” to descend.
Not sure it’s not always true, but in my understanding that’s why the FMC won’t auto start descend and requires the pilot to do it manually while it manages to reach the altitude at given points after engaging
Sorry, but this is incorrect. You absolutely MUST have a clearance to begin your descent, whether on a published STAR or not, it doesn’t change this requirement.
Now, the actual descent clearance may come in different forms. “Descend via the STAR”, “ When ready/pilots discretion descend to..”, or a “simple descend to…”, are examples of how this could be issued.
The point being, don’t begin your descent unless ATC has cleared you to do so. If you reach your calculated TOD and haven’t received a descent instruction from ATC, then you simply ask for one.
You can be ‘cleared for the [published] approach’ though, but usually that would come after clearance to the lowest altitude of the approach.
Start your descent without a clearance and see what happens when you land…
I’m taking it that this is not something you have personal experience of? 
Whatttttt… they’ll have a bottle of wine and a promotion waiting for them 
Haha. Nowadays with ADS-B they can see what we select on the autopilot even before the airplane starts doing it. It would be a huge effup to actually start the descent without clearance but it’s very unlikely to happen. It’s a more common (but still rare thing) to be cleared for descent and to select an incorrect level. Usually ATC will catch it long before we get close to busting a level.
