Training. What sort of training would you suggest? 40 sectors? Enough? Not enough? 10 sims? 20 sims? 50? Take the example of screening your friends at a bbq to drive your new ferrari I gave earlier. Even something that simple, they all had different requirements, different levels of training required. Even for letting your friends drive your car, there isnt a one size fits all response. Now try coming up with a one size fits all command training package for 1000+ pilots. What would you put in yours? One thing you wont find in any course is spoon feeding. I am not suggesting that that is what you are asking for either. If you know your stuff, and you have 10 years to learn it, you are showing a genuine effort to pass, but you are having a problem with a particular area, or something you just need to clarify, do you honestly think they would rather fail you than work on that area?
OK, so now you have developed this amazing training system that gaurantees 100% Ben Konobis, 100% of the time, on all fleets, right across the board, how are you going to make sure the guys you choose to train and check under your new system, all do so in exactly the same way to all candidates they pass through the system? Its easy to whinge and complain about the system, what are you going to replace it with?
You and I could sit down and read the same paragraph from a book and come up with two completely different interpretations of what we read. Now lets sit down and read 4 FCOMs. At the end of reading all that, do you think we would have identical interpretations on the entire manual suite? Doubt it. Differences are inevitable, especially where the written word is inolved.
No one disagrees with the unfairness of marking someone down for personal preference over SOP, it is unfair and unprofessional. The problem is when a check and training guy offers a suggestion on how to do something that he has used to his benefit for over a decade as a wide body captain, and some j&rk off SO or FO says, "Well where is that written?" If a checky is telling you something contrary to an SOP, or limitation, then that is a different issue. You have every right to quote the book, and show them where it is written, and that they are wrong. Doesnt matter what their personal preference is, no one will fail you for doing it completely by the book.
As for trainers withholding information from a candidates that are coming up for check, so that they will be gauranteed to fail, you dont believe that do you? Sounds like the rantings of a failed candidate... "It was my training Captains fault, he set me up to fail! If only he told me about the visual approach into Osaka! He knew I would get it, it is his fault!" Yeah, they all sat around the table, and worked out how to fail you. Do you honestly believe that if you picked the brains of a training captain prior to your final check that they would withhold anything?
Completely agree that longhaul doesnt prepare you for regional. So, if you are not well prepared, you get 12 months in the right hand seat to learn it after you miss out on your first attempt. If you take the egos out of it, it is a good result. If you still cant do it after 12 months, should you have a command? The system that has you jumping from one fleet to another is not ideal for training, but that is a result of the employment agreement, seniority, and your personal preference. Nothing to do with training, a completely seperate issue.