Originally Posted by ChrisN
(I know amateur gliding is miles removed from flying airliners, but in instructing, once past the essentials, most of the further training is in dealing with the unusual, not seeing once again that the student can fly the easy bits with no problems. I would have thought almost all subsequent checks and training follow that, for power including airliner flying, in sims or reality; and to the extent possible, also in self-imposed currency practice in manual flying. It seems obviously most beneficial if handling the more difficult bits. You confirmed it.)
You would think, wouldn't you? Sadly, in the US this is not exactly the case. The FAA requires recurrent checking. Not specifically recurrent training. My carrier, as do most others, are loath to provide more than the FAR's require because training is expensive. I take a PC (proficiency check) once a year and a PT (training) once a year, spaced six months apart. Sometimes I take two PC's a year due to pairing limitations in the training schedule.(my training partner may require a PC, a situation that makes us both fly a PC).
A PC is effectively an instrument checkride. In the Airbus, due to it being "stall proof", stalls are not checked. The PC consists of instrument departures, instrument approaches, engine failures on take off, and one or two minor abnormals (such as an airpac failure that leads to an emergency descent), one of the emergencies is usually a engine failure that leads to a fire that leads to an evacuation after landing. This sequence has not changed for me in over twenty years. Effectively, I re-take my ATP checkride over and over again. It's like the Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day.
The PT I am scheduled for once a year usually consists of PC practice (engine failures at V1, for example) and instruction on a particular procedure (such as a specific arrival/approach/missed approach into a particularly dangerous airport. Guatemala City or Bogata, Columbia for example)
In summary, there is very little time to train things like high altitude stall recovery, and since it is not required, the airlines don't desire to spend the time(money) to do so. To my carriers credit, they did include the UAS/ADIRS failure procedure in our PT's last year. But we trained it once and I don't expect to see it again in the near future. This last PT, I spend a great deal of time taxi-ing around in significantly reduced visibility which is actually good training because runway incursions have killed more pax than Airbus UAS events.
The only answer I see to the problem would be regulatory. The international aviation industry regulators must demand that the carriers provide realistic training in a wider range of abnormal system and aeronautical events instead of focusing on things that were pertinent in 1966.