Co-pilots May Sim instead of Fly to Train

Mxsmanic wrote:
The average airliner pilot has spent vastly more time in a real
cockpit fighting off boredom than in a simulator coping with
emergencies.

No surprise here, it's a part of the job. What great insight did you
pull this from?

Simulators are an excellent (and necessary) part
of pilot training, but there are situations that can never be
simulated ...

A lot more situations can be simulated than experienced in real life
(if one wishes to survive the experience), and it is thanks to
simulators that pilots are better prepared for emergencies today.
Many of the things they practice on simulators would never be safe to
attempt in real life, and others are so rare that they are never
likely to see them (but at least they'll be prepared if they do).

No argument here, this is the simulator's purpose. Reread my statement
"Simulators are an excellent (and necessary) part of pilot training" My
point was (and still is) there are situations that can't be duplicated
in a sim due to its limitations. When these rare situations occur it's
up to the crew's experience & piloting skills (CRM too) to save their
own butts

Without that simulation experience, quite a few of them would be killed when the real thing
comes along. The real world doesn't train you for potentially deadly emergencies.

Again, no argument. You're just being repetitive here.


The best example I can think of is United #232 (Sioux City, 1989). I
doubt Al Haynes 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.

Actually, there were four people controlling the plane, and it was
being steered by a DC-10 flight instructor who had been deadheading on
the flight.

You're nitpicking here, Haynes was PIC and coordinated control of a
crippled aircraft. As nobody had ever dealt with this severe of an
emergency before they were using their experience & CRM and "thinking
outside the box" to save the plane. You are wrong when you say
real-world experience was irrelevant as it saved most of the people on
that plane. Steering a jet with thrust control only was probably never
taught - it was the airmanship of Capt Haynes & crew that kept all from
being lost.


The crew succeeded in part because of proper CRM, not because of technical skills with something this foreign.

Okay, you have just showed your total ignorance on this subject.
Without technical skills, CRM alone wouldn't have kept the plane from
becoming a lawn dart.


Luck also played a substantial role in this crash. The combined 103 hours of experience of the flight deck crew was definitely a factor, but it was experience that could have been acquired in either real life or a simulator.

Luck was absolutely a factor, even if you can't quantify it. The bigger
factor IMHO was the "103 hours of experience" (not sure where you got
that metric from) of the flight crew. That experience could not have
been gained in a sim because nobody (then) ever thought it possible
that all three hydraulic systems could be lost on a DC-10 so I suspect
it was never part of the sim profile. Aircraft designs have been
updated since that accident. Nowadays, having learned from UAL232 I'm
guessing there are a few more emergencies that are handled in sim
training. Included are probably double flameouts, probably fallout from
the Pinnacle CRJ crash two years ago.


It (CRM) was important in keeping them calm and cooperative and organized; flying the plane was only a small part of it.

That's what being a professional pilot is about - keeping your cool
when things aren't going exactly by the book. If you think "flying the
plane was only a small part of it" you just haven't learned a thing
from participating in this forum...