SAS, the manouevre is considered demanding and is acknowledged as such in the RFM. The particular issue for the corporate operators is that their aircraft empty masses tend to be very high and therefore - even with minimal fuel - the aircraft may be at or very close to the MCTOM for the procedure. This reduces the margins for error considerably. The risk assessment then becomes "what is the real risk of damage to the aircraft during training vs the actual risk of an engine failure during normal operations." For this specific activity, the simulator wins. I'm not sure the CAA mandate this though - CAP789 has some guidelines on it that arose from the AAIB safety recommendations in 2004, but maybe individual FOIs require it for their AOC holders.
For the EC-155 the corporate aircraft empty masses are above the Cat A Vertical procedure training weight, so a simulator is the only way to practice the profiles. We also risk assessed the training policy for the recently introduced S-92 Cat A Vertical procedures and have decided not to carry out rejected take offs in the aircraft.
Regarding your BHL sim experiences, I fully endorse your comments about the travel and rest arrangements (in that era) being pretty crap! But, like Snarlie, I believe Operator conducted training is the ideal when conducting operator specific recurrent training rather than just license revalidation checks. As for not using local airports, again my sympathies are with the trainer. Many pilots become parochial in their outlook, and they forget that as instrument rating holders they should be able to pick up their Jeppesen plates and fly any approach in the world. Taking them out of their comfort zone gets them working a little harder. Of course, if the operator provides a sensible number of simulator training hours, then you can do LOFT exercises in a home environment and IF exercises in a less familiar environment - sensible being the key phrase
