If I may be able to digress. I have experience flying in an airline environment out of the busiest airspace environment in the world. I was the Local Safety Chairman for my pilots union. What I am about to say will not surprise anyone.
We had guys and girls that came from the pilot factories in Florida, where they turn them out like sausages, and they seem to have about the same quality at end production. We had fresh faced kids that shook at the knees when they saw it snow, and wouldn't preflight the aircraft in Summer and remained huddled around the weather machine looking for convective weather. I had one individual, who had such a poor knowledge of weather radar, used the down tilt to paint the buildings of Manhattan, then ask for vectors around "weather", without even discussing it with me first. The startled controller spent the rest of the day laughing at our airline as each of us checked in.
The real fun came at upgrade. None of these guys made it through on the first attempt and many were fired in disgust by our training department.
One of the wierdest things was to see a first officer who didn't know how to centre the OBS on an RMI when cleared direct to a VOR.
My background has been odd too, and thank goodness it was. I flew light aircraft on international deliveries, flew air-ambulance for four years and flew aborigines in the Outback for fourteen months in old beat to death Cessnas. I taught Boeings in simulators and aerobatics in tailwheel aircraft and one thing never escapes me...how lucky I've been.
A simulator will never teach you anything about your mortality, it will never develop your mechanical aptitude and it will never teach you the pride you should take in the very manipulation of flight controls to effect safe flight.
Simulators demonstrate emergency procedures well, and they are good for procedural exercise and demonstration. Simulators save money and lives, please don't believe that they don't. It's just that simulators were never designed to replace the real thing.
That would be just as stupid as to say that pornography was designed to replace making love!
