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. 
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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 ;).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Oh yeah. I fly to a couple of places like that. Coming into Bergamo from the north you need to slow down right before clearing the Alps and then dirty up the airplane to make it down the path. This is one of the places where increasing speed is not recommended and we need to use speedbrakes. First time you fly there it’s a bit dramatic but then you get used to it.
In the 737 the best descent rate per nautical mile is achieved at 180kts with flaps 10 and speedbrakes. Vertical speed will not be the highest but that’s the steepest descent angle in unaccelerated flight.
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Unless you’ve also got a speed restriction, which you will on almost every STAR, and is the situation we were talking about (from my understanding.). Of course, if there’s no speed restriction then tipping it over is fine… But then of course so is using the brake. Equally fine solutions; truly, no one cares if you use the brake.
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I fly the -700, -800, -900, -900ER, and -9Max. I flew -400s as well up until about 5 years ago.
Differences in the NGs are as you’d probably expect. Smaller ones climb better and are pretty pitch sensitive; longer bodies are heavier and smoother and require more tailstrike awareness. Our entire fleet has the HUD and it helps with that.
The -400 now, that was a different animal. Certainly not as nice of a cockpit, but I always liked the way it flew. Kind of like a reliable old truck. It was a good Southeast Alaska airplane; without a supercritical airfoil, it just landed when you pulled the power off; none of this skipping off of ground effect. And the cockpit was still good enough to be the airplane that was used to invent the whole concept of RNP approaches. 
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It’s been a while since I flew the 737 IRL, so I have forgotten a thing or two. Maybe someone can help me out: How do I capture a localizer only (on a fully funcioning ILS). Do I have to deselect the GS in the CDU, or is there another way. In the 320 I simply push the LOC pushbutton and when cleared the complete ILS the APP pushbutton. Thx in advance.
And that’s exctly what I’ve been saying the whole time. I’m just trying to show that every situation is different and that speedbrakes are not always the first course of action. They are when you’re speed restricted.
Nobody cares… partly. There are many airlines that push for greener operation and encourage flying the airplane in the most efficient way possible. I’m not making this stuff up. I’m just communicating the things that I’m being encouraged to do at a pretty large and successful airline (this didn’t happen in my previous small struggling airline for sure). And these are things I agree with. This is all sounding like we do things dramatically different. It’s not like that. Pilots know how to fly. I doubt there’s anyone out there using speedbrakes when they’ve delayed their descent and they’re 5 minutes past the original TOD. Most would just go LVL CHG and roll up the speed a little…
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I for myself did not reply particularly to you but more to the „sub-topic“ of the discussion.
I appreciate your insights.
What I as a flight simmer can see are documents provided by Boeing like the FCOM. Where I have no insight is specific airline SOPs and their background for those - like you mention e.g. green operation.
Aviation is so much more than just flying a plane.
Is it the VOR LOC mode that is doing this?
Yeah. Some airports even release statistics of the operation of the different airlines and we get emails showing us these statistics. For example we get tracking of things like:
-Time from Flaps1 to touchdown
-Distance from gear down to touchdown
-Cost Index compliance
-Continuous descent arrivals
-APU usage
-Single engine taxi
-Knots over F1 manoeuvre speed when F1 are selected (this one is my favourite)
…etc
And then we get comparisons between different airlines and the company releases recommendations on how to improve these figures. These are individual statistics and are in absolutely no way punitive or reason for pilots’ assessment by the airline. These are some of the ways that the large players in the low cost high profit part of the industry in Europe optimize operations. When an airline does 3000 flights per day the impact of these little things means a lot of money at the end of the year. This is mostly about increasing profit but it’s also about green operations bragging rights which is something that is becoming more and more important here in Europe and people do care about it. Some people hate that this is the way aviation has evolved. But let’s be honest: If it wasn’t for this now, flying would still be prohibitive like pre-90s and maybe most of us wouldn’t have a job because there wouldn’t be such a high demand for pilots.
Ok, I agree that this is off topic and some people don’t like these subjects. Fly the airplane however you want to fly it and take into account the comments of every IRL pilot here. None of us are wrong. We just happen to be in different parts of the industry. A pilot flying a b787 for a long haul legacy operator worries about different things than a b737 pilot doing 4 flights per day with 25 minute stops.
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One repeat problem I’ve had recently is around crosswinds on takeoff. I have the steering set to rudder only. On takeoff small rudder adjustments keep me on the centreline but on rotation I get a significantly increased weathervane and deviation from centreline. It almost feels like the rudder is too sensitive until the front wheel lifts off - I’m wondering if it’s associated with the rudder only setting.
Has anyone else had this? Is it me, or is it the MSFS ground handling?
Sticking my neck out a bit, but is previous post’s question just the simple fact of having increased control authority with increased speed? Thanks. --Redeye