Great story Judd, I wonder if we perhaps worked for the same outfit.!
Over 35 years ago I worked for a small island airline operating B737-200's, we did regular sim, using the sim of a foreign National carrier whose government oversaw the airlines AOC. Anyway eventually it was decided by the airline's management that they could no longer afford sim at all and we would do recurrent training, instrument ratings et al in the aircraft.
So how this would work is that when an aircraft was overnighting at a certain capital city airport a training captain and up to four "trainees" would ferry the aircraft to a seldom used airport nearby equiped with an ILS for the first ILS to a full stop. After back tracking a take-off was made, at unrealistically light weights, and at V1 the trainer would pull back a thrust lever to idle after covering the levers. Yes, I'm not kidding ( think ANZ DC8) . After airborne with levers now uncovered the candidate having successfully completed the QRH items while following a sort of tight circuit at 1500 was exempted from completing a full single engine approach brief because he was now on final. The training guy was setting gear and flap without referring to the PF, announcing it would be a 2 engine touch and go. After airborne from the T&G the same engine would again be put back to idle, the same circuit followed, QRH and after take off checks ignored and now various hydraulic pumps were turned off to simulate a "manual reversion" ( think RAAF B707). All candidates would go through pretty much similar absurd and dangerous exercises before the aircraft returned to do its next scheduled service.
Soon after the Airlines management decided to cancel their Jeppensen subscription as they claimed they were paying for new amendments when the old ones were not even worn out. The conscientious ones among us used to (illegally) photocopy relevant charts where possible.
There were a few pilots who felt that these safety issues were only "perceived", go figure.