Well I brought up the sim vs Airplane today in recurrent training.....
Was a jet recurrent but I'm typed on 2 turboprops, 2 piston engine, and 2 jets....all in excess of 5700 (12,500 lb for you not metric folks)...
The chief pilot made the comment that even with sim training theres still no replacement for training in the aircraft.
Having been in 6 different sims for 5 different aircraft I'd have to agree.
Sim's are a wonderfull thing but they are not the actual aircraft.
Sim's are designed to replicate the airplane's....but there are issues.
1. The sim is designed to be in fact more difficult to fly then the actual aircraft. Theory being when you transition to the actual airplane all is good.
Sadly no sim ever does a great job of replicating the aircraft and I've had sim's that were different day to day. It depends where the tech sets them. No sim I've ever been in ever ground handled like an actual aircraft. Theres other areas where realism suffers but it depends on the aircraft and the individual sim. Example: Boeing 727 sim...designed to replicate the -100 and with quick changes the -200....it doesn't do both perfectly...but pretty close. Example Falcon 20 sim....quick change from TFE-731's to CF-700's...doesn't do either particularly well.
Lets face it sometimes no two airplanes fly the same...every fleet has a dog or a hangar queen....but you get the point.
2. It seems like no sim is ever configured like your actual fleet. Hell...most places you'll work don't have everything in every airplane standardized. Switches move, Instruments can be different...as someone pointed out...reverse systems can have different mods. Systems can have different mods. Example: Metro's.....I trained in San Antonio on a Metro 23 sim with EFIS (Military C26B) for goodness sake.....Has anyone ever seen 2 metro's set up the same? Know where theres some EFIS equipped metros?
3. Its hard to do a walk around preflight on a sim....yeah ok I just threw that one in for some humour.
Certainly theres things that are best left to the sim and there are things that you can only ever replicate in the sim.
Its just not the end all be all second coming of JC....that some voices seem to be making out.
Wanna have your first engine failure in an actual airplane with pax on board having never had the experience in something thats relevant to your operation?
Scratches head.....well....ummm...that switch or instrument was right over here in the sim.
Holy cow! This thing doesn't really fly like the sim was set up to ......
Let the disagreement commence...but its something to think about.