Well, Shyguy,

It is my opinion that they felt like it was a slam dunk approach and they were high.

As a long time bus FO, I know that profile will work if it's given the correct info. Where it does poorly, is if there are extraneous points in the FMS. As another example, if you put a lead-in VOR fix to an ILS, the FMS will assume you're really going to fly 40 miles north of the field and create a shallow descent path.

Likewise, even if you semi clean up a LOC approach, the descent can still be gooned up, you have to have the next point to fly over in front of you (whether it's the stepdown fix or the FAF, has to be the next one). If you don't, then the airplane won't intercept the VNAV path you are anticipating.

And when it doesn't intercept the VNAV path, a common technique is to command a V/S descent---especially when you THINK you're above the VNAV path.

And, a common descent rate ballpark for the outer regions of a non-precision approach is in the 1k-1500 fpm.

So, what I think happened is the failed to clean up the approach and were counting on the airplane transition to the Profile-Final Approach Mode for a VNAV arrival. There should have been other clues that the airplane wasn't where they thought it was, but they failed to catch them.

How were they trained on accomplishing this type of approach? What FMS pages did they have called up? FDX has a specific set of FMS pages?

There are contributing factors, but it's my opinion that if they had cleaned up the FMS, VNAV would have worked for them and we wouldn't have someone postulating a voluntary withdrawal from upgrade training 12 years ago was causal