Hi all,
I just wanted to add my two penneth to the discussion on the sim.
My experience was a little different to that mentioned above. I had a pretty rough time in the sim, basically starting with a heavy landing (which broke the sim
). Notionallythis isn't assessed - but...!
We had been told in advance that we would be assessed to different standards (I am a short haul capt and my colleague was leaving the RAF) and so wasn't too surprised that he was accepted and I received a PFO.
I would have liked to know exactly what the reason was, however despite accepting the offer of feedback, I never heard any more from BA. I am pretty sure that CRM wasn't a factor though as we worked very well together and managed all of our checklists and kept to the numbers in the briefing (ish ;-))
In the end I wished I had had an hour or so, beforehand, to get used to the handling. With a 20 minute flight I was so pre-occupied that I had less capacity than I would have liked. Maybe the problem was perceived to be elsewhere, but I have the impression that the flying let me down.
On a general note, I'm not sure that I would volunteer to fly from the left seat again as I also felt this went against me (again I don't know for sure). However, a colleague, who I know to be an excellent pilot, recently failed the sim assessment at Condor after asking to fly from the left seat. In his case he was told in the debrief that this had not gone down well!
For anyone bored / desperate enough to read back, my full post was around October last year.
Good luck to all.
KT
