Originally Posted by
2StgTurbine
New company policy has decided it is not stable
. We are expected to fly ODPs as if we had autothrottles and vnav because according to the company, if you dive and drive to simplify the arrival, the lag time to start the next descent may leave you too high to cross the next gate 5 miles ahead.
Soooo ...
Your policy says an ODP is stable, and your FOQA data says it requires 60-80 control inputs per minute.
If that's stable, I can't imagine how many more control inputs are required for "un-stable."
I think a more accurate adjective is smooth. There's nothing unstable about idle descents to step-down altitudes.
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