Our TRTO generally does the airborne training on the actual aircraft the crews are going to fly, it seems to make more sense than using a generic Sim
I'll agree that certain things done in the aircraft environment "live" so to speak do add benefit, although IMHO (and i say this is only MY opinion lol) i think more benefit perhaps is gained by using a simulator for initial/recurrent training - the reason i say this is because in the actual a/c for example, in certain simulated failures your not going to get the realism of lights/bells to distract etc. - i am sure my peers will disagree, and of course that is welcomed as discussion in my eyes is good, always nice to view things from a different perspective.
Just as an aside, i'm presuming when you refer to "generic" sim Phil, your referring to the B200 etc. and not the CJ's ??