I remember doing a brief for an approach to somewhere - can’t remember exactly where but it was a decent 1st World airport. Started talking about the offset VOR and how we were going to fly it and the guy in the RHS said “I don’t do NPAs”. “Hahaha!” went I, then I realised he was being serious. I asked him how we were going to get in, given the ILS was U/S in the AIS and the weather was definitely not good enough for a visual. OK, I’ll do it in RNAV he said; fine, I replied, but as it’s not in the database and offset, how are you going to do that using our SOPs? Cue look of horror and confusion.
Look, I said, let’s rewind back to the beginning and forget you said you didn’t do VOR approaches. We went through the entire process: FMC set up, expected modes and FMAs, contingencies, visual segment, blah blah. Didn’t take that long and he flew a perfectly acceptable raw data VOR that I was able to land off, which seemed to amaze him. A few beers later, he confessed that he had become very under confident with raw data, A/P in or out, and had been dreading the next sim where, by all accounts, you ended up having to do something like the above. Not an issue, I said, it happens to us all but the way back is practice, not avoidance. Ask and ye shall receive...