I was on a B Shakedown, and NOBODY was happy o get signed off, nor were the NTT wanting to do so.
The exercises were nowhere near realistic enough to make me feel that after only another two days' basic training on my other sector I would be considered fully ready to operate with live traffic (emergencies training excluded). The operation of the HMI was still requiring too much thought to be able to handle 42/60 or whatever. In addition, the NTT and the MMI specialists were still writing green forms in response to various things the Sim was doing. And more time was spent discussing those than teaching. Surely by now it should be a stable, known operation which we can trust to provide a realistic representation of the NERC operation.
Another problem, which I think there are no plans to change, was the operation of the OpsSim itself. MOPS for my particular sector dictates that the Planner should take account of traffic crossing in another sector before making level offers to prevent rejects or reflects. Trouble is, on the OpsSim there is NO traffic in the neighbouring sector, and anything you offer to the input people gets accepted. Not very realistic. Traffic levels were also ridiculously low (despite assurances they were TSF-15%) to be anywhere near realistic. (For example, in an hour-long exercise, 3 LL inbounds, no KK, and about 5 GW/SS on S14)
On the question of time left, not many people realise that with the B modules included, we have only 9 days' training left between now and going live!
I wonder how many airlines would be happy putting new FOs on the line with not enough time on the Sim even to know where all the switches are, let alone how operate the aircraft (alone if necessary) in all conditions. Let's hope TAG's review will show the folly of trying to push this through with such unseemly haste.
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"Take-off is optional, Landing is mandatory"