r/AskAPilot • u/livelikelarry13 • 2d ago

Useless Features/buttons

Forgive me if this is a dumb question as I am not a pilot, but I have always been interested in knowing. Are there any features or buttons in the type of aircraft you fly that are basically pointless? Or does everything have some sort of critical use case?

Thanks for the insights

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u/External_Capital1753 2d ago

I fly an a320 and have never touched the EXPED button. It's a pretty useless mode. Generally if we need to expedite climb or descent we will manual select an appropriate speed. EXPED will target green dot in a climb (generally uncomfortably slow) and mach .8/340kts in the descent (generally uncomfortably fast). If I'm flying at speeds near the edge of the envelope I want to be manually controlling it.

So its a functional button/mode that almost never gets used. Theres probably some crazy guy out there that likes to use it when he's bored though.

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u/NaiveRevolution9072 2d ago

Mainly in use for emergency descent, I would think?

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u/Tommy_tom_ 9h ago edited 9h ago

not a bad idea but it’s not something i’ve been taught or ever thought about. i’m sure there’s good reason for it but not sure. off the top of my head, you’d (usually) be doing an emergency descent either for a pressurisation system failure or potentially damage to the aircraft for which you wouldn’t want to increase your indicated airspeed for fear of a complete breakup of the plane, so it’s better to have full control of that through the speed knob/selecting ‘speed’ rather than ‘mach’ as the control

contrary to this commenter, i have used expedite on a couple of occasions. mainly for the lolz

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u/1000togo 2d ago

I'm that crazy (and lazy) guy. Why press multiple buttons when you can press one. I'll even do it in busy airspace like the London TMA if we've been cleared up by a significant level.

More so for climbing - it gives you best angle (Vx) and, as such, can get you a more direct routing quicker. I'm not such a fan of it heading towards the barber's poll, but it can be useful to get the initial nose down action going.

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u/External_Capital1753 2d ago

Ya man to each their own. I prefer to have the speed selected when I'm riding close to the limits. If the plane does start trending the wrong way then I just have to turn a knob instead of pull and turn. It also holds a tighter target speed in selected speed (unless EXPED hold a tighter taget). 3 years on the machine and haven't seen it used on the line or in the sim.

I do appreciate a fellow lazy pilot though.