iSteve- as everybody is bored to death and quite exhausted by this thread- a bit of creep is probably in order!
Simulators- it's a complete rumour that they are 'true to life' and 'you can't tell the difference'. Garbage! I still don't know whether they are purposely made to be unstable and unreal, but they can be awful- and I think a lot of pilots hate them to bits. The Classic simulator used to be dreadful- so unstable while you were looking at your charts it would be tipping over. The handling is a pathetic representation of the real thing, the visuals quite sad. So I am amused when I see incidents being repeated for analysis in the simulator- I know how unreal it will be. With all due respect for Capt. Al Haynes in the Sioux City DC10 crash (which is undoubtedly one of the most skillful and most amazing stories of piloting in the history of aviation), much was made of the fact that nobody could replicate the survival of some of the passengers in a real simulator. Regretably some of the blame for that lies with how horrible simulators are as well as the extreme height of flying skill shown by the crew that day.