I have a lot of sympathy with the majority of the posts here, and am grateful that the consensus nowadays seems to be to condemn this sort of overload training as useless as best, and damaging to skills and confidence at worst.
However.
As most of us will probably recognise, a shift in focus of modern training has taken place in recent years: away from training specific (or combinations of specific) failures, to training competencies to better equip pilots for managing the unforeseen and untrained - think Qantas 32, UA232, UA1549 etc. To suggest none of these events have taught us anything as pilots is patently false (though I am sure we are all thankful we had the opportunity to do the learning second- rather than first-hand!).
Training multiple (related or unrelated) failures CAN have its place in training, if such a scenario is used to TRAIN (and not test to breaking point) pilots in targetted competencies, eg prioritising tasks, avoid distraction from flying, delegation to crewmembers etc etc - all essential skills that can be usefully employed across the board iin any situation.
The caveat: this sort of training must be carefully and thoughtfully planned and delivered, wiht a defined objective and not merely to tick a dozen different boxes on the recurrent schedule (only as a non-jeopardy/non-technical training exercise, and not part of a prof check); and the debrief does takes a bit more effort from the conscientious instructor, if crews are to be left with a positive experience and an improvement in their comptencies and confidence. The actual outcome of the 'flight' is of secondary importance to the crew's experience in recognising and practicing good competencies in a realistic environment, and most important of all being able to debrief themselves on what worked and what didn't.
Some 'old-school' instructors (a small minority in my experience, and thankfully getting smaller) I have observed as a stds TRE perhaps don't quite appreciate the way the purpose of this training has evolved since they first started yelling at people in the sim 35 years ago, and what is now expected of them,...the same barriers exist to (re)training instructors in these new skills too. After all, they are human beings* too. AviatorDave paints a good picture of the an instructor with the 'wrong stuff'!
*most of them
The expectations and experiences of the contributors on this thread reassure me that as an industry we are heading in the right direction here, nevertheless!
Last edited by Rostermouse; 19th Oct 2019 at 09:28.