Requesting a hold from ATC for descents

Mxsmanic wrote:

Sam Spade writes:


Never happens. Like the other gentleman says, the spoilers (actually
speed brakes when used in flight) are the "ace in the hole."


I've tried spoilers, but they aren't always sufficient to please the
FMC. Now I go through every leg of the route checking for
unreasonable-looking descents (or, theoretically, climbs, although the
FMC seems to calculate those more reliably).


In the 727 we didn't have any FMC to keep happy. We actually had to
figure it all out by ourselves.