I really liked the topic and its been a crucial debate for at least the last 20 years or so, we all flown and fly different equipments, noticed in the past few years things got more standardized as a result of the aviation authority work groups, which would makes the argument area smaller than it was years ago I should say. Safety standards regarding the ability to fly any airplane are the same, where the definition/perception of it might stand as a hurdle. In general, for us pilots, to satisfy the authority we need to demonstrate skills to operate the airplane which we are typed in the abnormal flights scenarios, the flight manual of any airplane is full of emergency procedures which would take the authorities a year before they can assure a single pilot is professional enough to deal with all these emergency situations, since time means money the operators became more sensible in dealing with the syllabus of the proficiency checks within the guidelines of the authorities. Is it sensible to check a pilot on ditching in water if the operation of the fleet is always local flights over a desert, or checking a pilot on ash encounter if the flights sectors never around any volcanoes area of risk. Same thing goes with a lot of other emergencies where aviation accidents statistics would nominate the need for such skill/knowledge test. Everybody does single engine/landing/go around procedures in the simulator checks but no more than 3% of the pilots in any organization (as a modest guess) have actually encountered out of the simulator. Sorry for the lengthy introduction, when it comes to manual flying or raw data instruments flying the same rules should apply, how often you or other operators lose the automation system or navigation computers/equipments? And how often during IMC? Is it really worth the time waste to incorporate it as a part of the proficiency check?. No reason for us to call certain regions of operators as being unsafely relaxed as they are calling us unrealistically strict. In my opinion instruments flying should be seen once every 3 years in the simulator as a practice and as a non failing item, for the Simulator check you should use all the normal equipments you use in your day to day flying and the check should be very realistic, other than this we are wasting our time.
My regards to all the participants
