Well, after the recent debate on another very contentious issue, (one side of which twosides started), wouldn’t another one here, perhaps called “Trainers (not!) I Have Known” lead to some interesting posts? (And some very informed guesses as to who the post-ers are NOT naming.)
In my mind’s eye, I can see just about every man who was ever a FO in my current airline chomping at the bit to tell “their” horror story about a certain gent who will remain nameless who just lurrrrved giving ridiculously unlikely multiple failures to the point where the average bloke didn’t know whether was coming or going – and to endorse Capt H. Peacock’s excellent post, I’d say not one of them (make that “us”!) came out of those sessions having learned a damn thing. Sim with this gent was a survival exercise, certainly not a learning experience. Unfortunately, this gent put the brakes, and in some cases, the total kibosh on more than one man’s career, some would say undeservedly in more than a few cases. (I suspect there’s been one or more such people at some time in the checking and training department of just about every airline in the world.)
HotDog followed the well-trodden path in that many new checkies try to re-invent Aviation in their first few months on the panel and some can be a bit OTT. Thankfully, most settle down pretty quickly as HotDog says he’s done.
It’s a fine line any checkie/trainer walks at the best of times. On the one hand, you want the trainee to walk away feeling that he’s learned something and is better equipped to face an unusual situation on the line than he was when he walked into the sim. On the other, you don’t want him to go away feeling that he didn’t test or hone his own abilities just a bit, or he might as well have stayed home. A good checkie knows where to draw this line for each and every individual – and that line varies from personality to personality, and finding it is the real skill.
Having worn both hats, I think there can be times when “the wrath of Khan” approach can be a positive learning experience – but that’s ONLY at the end of a session when the guy’s (that should be “ guys’ ” plural) have done a better than average job and you’re left with a spare half hour. That’s when I would sometimes give a crew a horror scenario, but not before telling them that the Renewal was over and this was to be looked on purely as “fun”. Most guys, when they knew the pressure wasn’t on them in such an exercise, came away very happy to have been given the exposure to something unusual.
I think the whole business of Training/Checking can be encapsulated in one sentence. “If the trainee/candidate doesn’t come out of the sim session feeling that he or she has learned something, the trainer/checkie is the one who’s failed.” Another way of saying it is “big T, little C is the best mix by far”.