Maybe I'm old fashioned but what comes out of all this confusion, having flown for nigh on 60 years in all departments including 20 years as an airline captain, it appears that exam setters are losing the plot. I don't think I could get my head around some of the "requirements" they ask these days.
What I CAN get my head around is how to comprehensively operate an aeroplane to satisfy my employer and turn him a profit. I understand the environment I operate in, be it weather or regulation.
I understand too what the engineer needs to know if I put an aircraft unserviceable, so that he can fix it; how to use ATC to achieve the shortest, most fuel efficient sector. I even try to understand the pressures that ground-staff have to put up with minute by minute.
Importantly, I think I also know how to get the best out of my mate in the right hand seat so that we have a successful, stress-free day even when things go against us. I don't need the accumulating, unnecessary BS that seems to constitute the academic side of a commercial pilot's career these days.
Perhaps some of the "setters" should get out into the real world and realise what is really needed to run a safe, successful operation day by day. The CAA inspectors used to do it and their contribution was welcome on board. Your fleet inspector became a friend.
My impression has been that, as each new exam setter came along, he/she would try to outdo the other with an even more remote question or unreal situation. Perhaps, as in the 70s, it's time for a new approach again.
Or maybe the commercial aviation business has been changed so much out of recognition that the time to hang my headset up has finally come.........