So I am a fan of climbing via pitch mode with the autopilot to maintain my company’s climb profile. Most of my coworkers use vertical speed and a few use speed hold.

Although the climb profile my company uses is based on airspeed, climbing in speed hold creates an uncomfortable ride because the aircraft will make large pitch changes to maintain the exact selected airspeed. I like to select the pitch associated with my desired airspeed so that when there is a small deviation from my desired airspeed, I control the correction. Some like to use vertical speed to do that, but I think it takes longer for the aircraft to respond to vertical speed changes, the vertical speed value associated with an airspeed constantly changes with altitude, you can only select increments of 100 fpm, and the aircraft will still make large pitch changes to chase the selected vertical speed.

I have noticed aircraft respond more directly when in pitch mode, climbing around 4 degrees nose up holds the desired airspeed at nearly all altitudes for my aircraft, you can make changes in very small increments, and the aircraft pitch only changes when you command it. When I hand flying the climb profile I look at my airspeed and then I look at the attitude indicator to adjust the pitch to maintain my desired airspeed, not the VSI to change my rate of climb.

If someone has a good reason to use other vertical modes or why certain modes are bad, I am interested.