The 737 is slippery during descent, and even the slightest variation in the winds aloft forecast can necessitate speed brakes to stay on the planned descent profile. Not sure what to make of this comment - it’s a tool that should be used when needed.
Disagree. It’s way more uncomfortable for the pax, if you dive with high speed to regain the altitude. In the majority of cases it is not the fault of the flight crew anyway. Number 1 reasons for use of speedbrakes is that you did not get the descent clearance by ATC, because of traffic or air space structure. Number 2: preceeding traffic. Number 3: unexpected shortcut. I completely agree with @Stearmandriver2 's statement (flying airliners > 20 years)
i did a similar thing a couple of weeks ago…
But in my case I had entered the departure and arrival airports the wrong way round in simbrief, and was wondering why there wasn’t an option for the active runway like on FR24, along with this annoying error message "departure airport doest not match up with coordinates and not to mention the lack of two to three other runways… took a while for me to click…
This is a fairly indefensible statement, though I understand that you don’t understand why.
It’s like saying that using your instruments vs looking out the window and using pitch and power is “inelegant.”. I assume you would not say this.
Basically, operating a complex aircraft is a series of challenges, of puzzles, of problems to solve. Usually they’re minor, but they all have significant consequences if handled poorly. And as importantly, the current puzzle needs to be solved efficiently, so that it isn’t occupying more mental bandwidth than necessary, when the next one comes along.
So you’re on an idle descent path and you get shortcutted, or the winds aren’t as forecast, so you start getting fast because the plane has to pitch over a little steeper to stay on path. ATC is predicating spacing based on you flying the speed you’re SUPPOSED to be flying.
So you have a few choices:
-
You can ignore it. I’ve seen this many times. This technique sometimes even comes with a perceived witticism from the PF - 'hey, what’s 20kts between friends?". Sure, except it screws the entire spacing plan and you and probably the guys behind you get pulled off the arrival, increasing your fuel burn and workload since the arrival is now not progressing as briefed.
-
You can try every way imaginable to manage this situation that requires drag without actually adding drag. Maybe you get creative with flight guidance modes (probably forgetting to set the next restriction in the MCP as you exit VNAV and flail madly at MCP, eliminating your protection from getting low).
You can accept the fast, reasoning that you’ll intentionally get slower than expected after the next level off, “averaging it out.”. (And ignoring all effects of TAS changing with altitude.).
You can click off the autopilot and fly a shallow series of S turns.
Yep, I’ve seen all these and more.
But think about it, what do they all have in common? A drastically increased workload for you (and your PM, who can’t effectively back you up on anything because he’s sitting there trying to figure out what the heck you’re even doing.). So then what happens when the next problem that needs solving comes along, while you’re still wrapped up with the fast?
Things get missed, and this is there UASs come from.
OR - hear me out, here - you could simply use the tool that Boeing put in your airplane for EXACTLY THIS PURPOSE, and solve the problem quickly and simply (and in a manner that makes perfect sense to your PM).
Which option sounds the safest? Is there ever a time when the safest option is NOT the most “elegant”? (That’s rhetorical, of course there is not.)
You are correct that there are unfortunately some pilots out there who do not understand this. These are the same pilots who will float a landing out of the touchdown zone while looking for that “greaser” (nothing wrong with looking for a smooth landing within parameters of course), or rationalize any manner of non-standard “techniques”, and it has the same root cause: ego.
I’ve been flying and teaching in airline jets for 25 years now; the last 10 on the 737. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that nothing will kill you faster in an airplane than an ego. Nothing.
When you’re on an aircraft where the pilots use the correct tool to solve a developing problem, they aren’t being “inelegant”… They’re keeping you safe.
Sorry if this seems like I came at you a little aggressively, but given that there are quite a few aspiring professional pilots on this forum, I feel like these kinds of attitudes need to be addressed.
good to know I’m not on my own. I’d done a repair of the 737. Rebooted and tried the flight plan 3 times still didn’t click 
But wait… that wasn’t the worst one I’ve done…
I did a flight plan and imported it to the 737 folder and started my fms programing and everything but I changed my mind with the arrival airport so I quickly changed that in simbrief to another airport..
Quickly did the last of my checks in the 737, rushed everything and wasnt until in the air and went on navigraph to check my arival data as I was getting close to my arrival airport and oh… “why is my plane not showing up in navigraph and not here??” “But why is everything looking okay on the fms and appears to be following the path…”
I was incredibly confused and completely lost then it clicked when I decided that navigraph must be faulting and closed down and rested it and updated the “now changed” flightplan that I had remembered that I actually didnt update the departure and arivals in the fms…
Regan washington and Newark are completely different places… funny that 
And this is why we are not real life pilots
Just let it do its thing. If it settles at a faster speed that usually means that the winds on the forecast page are not set up correctly or are outdated. If the airplane is in VNAV PTH and the resulting speed is faster than the bug speed simply enter the new speed manually where it says TGT SPD or just give yourself a direct to the current waypoint for the airplane to recalculate the path. Speedbrakes are rarely needed at those levels unless you really need to fly a specific speed and you’re high.
These are the areas where it’s impossible to simulate the real airplane and the real atmosphere perfectly. You can’t truly learn the quirks of descent energy management outside of a multi-million dollar full flight sim or the real airplane. It’s not like the actual VNAV code is public domain or released freely by Boeing haha. It’s something simmers have to live with. It’s close enough though.
Well. I’m sure you remember the first days in the cockpit when you went for the speedbrake when it wasn’t necessary and it was your more experienced colleague who said immediately “Dude, you really DON’T need speedbrakes now. You can do better”.
oh the joys of flight simming
I’m not a pilot and will defer to you here. I didn’t mean to suggest that you should never use the speed brakes - only that it seems to me that they are maybe used too much because it is easy and it is sometimes used to cover up sloppy speed/path management on the descent (e.g. failing to enter the descent winds, etc.).
Try to land at Paro on RWY15 without spoiler. No chance even with flaps full and gear down after passing the last mountain before you dive into Paro. 
Can’t say we’ve had a culture of micromanaging the PF that way at either airline I’ve flown for. I wouldn’t be inclined to say such a thing to an FO of mine. MAYBE when conducting OE with someone new to the plane, though I’d probably frame it a bit more professionally ;).
I totally agree.
On the couple of occasions someone said that to me as a young FO I politely told them to poke off and offered them control of the aircraft (in a good natured way of course). They never took it. Conversely, I would have never said that to an FO myself, there’s no need for that sort of willy-waving in a flight deck, particularly in flight. Unless it’s training if you’re going to be like that you need to be perfect yourself, and no one ever is.
On the type I fly now the speedbrake is very much a primary flight control.
Well the Pilots I have worked with in the past, I am not an airpilot myself, but I have worked with many in a few jobs, have all said the same thing especially in europe, it is often the case you find yourself with the following dilemma with ATC.
I can either slow down, or go down, but I can’t do both unless of course I use the speed brake if that is possible. Also some airlines, stipulate that if a shortcut is given and it is safe to do so, and I assume requires a little tweaking to the current flight config you should really take it as I understand it.
EGSS as I have been told is fairly famous for shortcuts this was a good few years ago and may have changed, but many a pilot has told me that they often needed to ride the speed brakes down quite a bit, nothing to do with mistakes just business as usual during certain times.
To be honest I could care less as a PAX, I mean sometimes when driving you got to ride the brakes to make progress as silly as that may sound.
It is an interesting topic, but nothing is ever perfect or will not always go the way you planned. Something will always change somewhere especially when relying on things like wind and weather and other unknown factors. Pilots IMHO do their best in often strenuous situations.
One Pilot I knew hated landing at LEBB because of the wind factors in the area and the shortcut’s given there (dont know if it is the same now) would require some big alt drops with speed brakes to get set up for it. But as with all of this, it is about making the right choice with your options. I do not think you can ever understand this in a sim where no lives are lost if you mess up.
Hope this is not too Offtopic now but the discussion reminds me of a BFU report of an accident in Mannheim 2008.
The BFU states in the report „In der Bewertung des Verhältnisses der Flugbesatzung untereinander geht die BFU davon aus, dass der PIC eher die Rolle eines Fluglehrers und weniger die eines Ka- pitäns einnahm. In dieser Rolle war er bereit, erkannte Fehler des FO zu akzeptieren und nicht, wie von einer Zweimann-Besatzung zu erwarten, entsprechend der MCC- Vorgaben zu agieren bzw. zu intervenieren.
Da zu keinem Zeitpunkt ein hektisches Handeln im Cockpit zu erkennen war, ist der im Landeanflug vom PIC (PNF) mehrfach geäußerte Ausspruch „keine Hektik“ eher als eine Form der Zustimmung gegenüber dem FO (PF) zu verstehen. Der FO (PF), der bei diesem Anflug mental sehr gefordert zu sein schien, verließ sich auf seinen „Fluglehrer.“
Das Zusammenwirken beider Flugzeugführer entsprach nach Ansicht der BFU nicht dem einer Flugbesatzung im Linienflugbetrieb.“
I‘m not a Pilot but my interpretation is: the captain is not in the cockpit to train the FO. Using speedbrakes in the 737 is pretty standard I guess. Therefore there‘s no need for the Captain to instruct the FO how he would do that.
Maybe the right place would be to debrief that after the flight that the experienced PIC explains what he would have made different.
As long as there‘s no safety risk or misbehavior from a FO as PF, I don‘t see the urgent necessity to talk about such topics during descent/approach phase, there should be higher priorities in the flight deck in that phase. Or other way round: does it increase the safety of the specific flight that the PIC acts like an instructor in line operations? No? - then leave it.
But that‘s my outside view and I‘m not a specialist in those topics.
For the interested: https://www.bfu-web.de/DE/Publikationen/Untersuchungsberichte/2008/Bericht_08_1X001_DO328_Mannheim_RE.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
And of course the quoted paragraph is just one small part of the big puzzle and no specific security measure was implemented for that.
Not germane to this particular discussion but as a RL 737, wondering if you have experiences on multiple 737 versions and if so, how do they compare to each other from a handling standpoint?
If anyone is looking for a really interesting flight to replicate, I strongly suggest flying Air Alaska flight 184, Anchorage to Adak. Adak (population 500) is a small, mountainous island near the end of the Aleutian Island chain and in it’s former life as a Naval Air Station, was nicknamed “home of the winds”. ASA flies there weekly. If you are flying during one of the rare nice days, you’ll get amazing views of the entire Aleutian chain. If you fly during a typical day, you’ll be fighting driving rain, very high, gusting winds (most of the time of the crosswind variety), fog and during your final decent, you need to make a course adjustment to avoid a volcano! It’s seriously fun stuff.
For those who are interested, there is a pretty nice freeware PADK available over on Flightsim.to.
Have fun folks.
So are you saying that your taxi to the gate was less than 3 minutes???
When you have a captain with 15000h and a FO with just 3000h it’s to be expected that the captain will make recommendations based on experience. Most FOs at that level of experience know better though. Sometimes you need speedbrakes and sometimes you just don’t. It’s all about situational awareness and every situation is different (restrictions, preceding traffic, weather, etc).
If the FO considers that the captain’s recommendations go against the SOPs or agains what he knows as a trained pilot by all means he has the duty to use advocacy while maintaining a good CRM level to express his opinions. Using speedbrakes when they’re not necessary is far from being a dramatic thing and nobody would make a big deal out of it of course. This is how we learn…
But, come on, if you’re given a shortcut and suddenly you are high on path but still high enough on descent to manage your energy with speed rather than speedbrakes then that’s a better, cleaner and more efficient option than to use speedbrakes. Yes, the speedbrakes are usually necessary in the 737 because it’s slippery and speed tends to build up on the last portions of descent. Speedbrakes are often necessary when flying a glideslope with F5. These are things that I find hard to explain in the forum because they are almost impossible to replicate in MSFS. If you’re fast at 8000ft, by all means use the speedbrakes to get your energy state in line. If you’re on a glideslope and the speed starts running away, sure, Speedbrakes+F10, F15+GEAR, final flaps… use whatever you need to fly your airplane!
…But if you’re fast and/or high at 25000ft there are better ways to recover than to use the speedbrakes. Just type a slightly faster speed in the DES page and let VNAV do its thing.
You can try to figure out that on approach RWY15 at Paro. When you passed the last Mountain over PR814 you need everything out to destroy altitude without building up speed.