The visuals in simulators do not adequately depict the runway environment throughout the whole procedure. At our Airline circling can only be performed VMC. Charted minima for circling approaches are not to be used...
Same at Cathay, so all the whiners claiming we are less proficient are a bit late. Our minimums at CX are pretty much VFR as well, so don't know what the fuss is about.
The only thing we have lost is the absolutely useless demonstration in the simulator every other RT/PC cycle. You know the one, where you start a clock abeam and turn base at 30 seconds. You know, the visual procedure that you perform with reference to ... instruments.
As mentioned previously, useless. We can still circle since VFR minimums are pretty much the same as our circling minimums. We just have to call it a visual approach. Semantics really.
