Originally Posted by
Vessbot
I disagree with this, and strongly. Line flying is where the real training happens: every day, continuously. It’s where the habits are ingrained, skills developed, and the automatic reactions (mental and physical) set up for success or failure.
Actual training in the sim is just an initial scaffold to hold together a flight from beginning to end while following the SOP and profiles, and learning how to handle a few chosen non-normals, without everything falling apart. And then you do a few flights with a check pilot in the real plane to do your first few with a heightened level of safety backstop.
Thank you for putting this more eloquently than I could. Perhaps there's a cultural component to the difference in philosophies. Stateside, a lot of CA's will conclude the initial briefing with "let's keep it safe, and have fun". That's not an invitation to fly under the golden gate bridge, but if i haven't done a localizer approach in a while, we may request one even though there's an ILS available. Whether you'd consider that practise or training, the point is that it hones the skills for the day when you
need to fly a localiser approach.