Remember, we have a crew member or 2 in the back too. We have standard altitudes we as pilots do things at, this gives the FA's a standard altitude and thus known quantity of time to finish all the junk they need to do. The chime is their trigger, take a peek in the FAM all the stuff they are supposed to accomplish. Now they don't have to google the elevation of Denver, Boise or Casper to see how fast they have to work. Per FOM, sterile for cockpit is still 10k msl and 1000 feet to level off, the 10000 afe chime is simply for the flight attendant as far as I can see, so we can chat away between 10k afe and 10k Msl. The only place in a company manuals that states the 10k agl chime is the start of sterile is in the FAM, which obviously we don't have to follow.

If the chime is really for FAs, and provides a known amount of time, then it should be based on time to landing, not altitude. Consider flights that never get up to 10,000.

OAL use 10,000 MSL for the chime, just curious as to why we choose to be different. Haven’t really paid attention when on DL JS, but maybe it’s “the Delta way”.

On flights below 10k a good flight crew briefing should solve that problem. As long as the CA brings it up, the FA isn't on her cell phone talking about her cats, and the FO isn't busy studying for upgrade.

Depends on the airline. OO chimes at FL180 on the way down, as best as I can tell...

Seems like it would make the most sense, which is odd because OO doing anything that makes sense is rare.

I don’t buy the FA argument in regards to 10,000 AFE because the first thing they want to know when they walk onboard is the flight time and mileage. The chime just tells them when they can begin/wrap up that process.

i file 8000 just so I don’t have to do the chime or turn off the lites

Here's my take on doing things STANDARD, SOP or BY THE BOOK. As a Captain, it makes things so much easier on the FO if the Captain at least tries to operate Standard.

Is Standard perfect? No, but at least everything is predictable.

Should every deviation from Standard be a beatdown event? No, but Standard should be the target. All planned deviations should be prebriefed thru an archaic method of communication called talking.

Be nice to the FO.

That's all.

We do it at 10,000 afe. So probably why you switched to that. We go into many high alt places and if you chime at msl it gives the fa's a very short amount of time to prepare for landing.

Correct. 18,000 down, 10,000 on the way up. MSL. You know, because you can see that in the cockpit.

Didn’t it used to be based on time at one of the previous three pieces, pre-merger? Seems I have heard someone mention that.

If it’s for FA timing, it should be based on time to landing. If it’s for sterile cockpit, then it should be MSL, unless in higher terrain, then AFE.