Mxsmanic wrote:

Indeed, even today, someone with 5000 hours of intensive simulation
experience covering a very wide array of in-flight possibilities would
probably be a better pilot than someone with 5000 hours of real-world
experience spent sitting idle in a cockpit watching the figures change
on the FMC and trying not to fall asleep.

An unrealistic comparison, I think. An airline pilot with 5000hrs of
real-world experience has spent a significant number of hours getting
beat up annually in a simulator exposed to a wide array of emergencies,
simple and compound. Simulators are an excellent (and necessary) part
of pilot training, but there are situations that can never be
simulated, and it is their real-world experience that pilots call upon
to save their aircraft when the shiite hits the fan.

The best example I can think of is United #232 (Sioux City, 1989). I
doubt Al Haines was ever trained to control a DC-10 without hydraulic
power to the flight control surfaces. Yet he managed to steer the jet
with differential thrust to a (scary) landing without the loss of all
aboard. There will never be a replacement for experience IMO.