Contacted
That sounds great and would apply to a normal environment. EK however is far from that.
It is certainly desirable to be confronted with an unexpected situation and every pilot would like to be trained in such a way. The solutions and decisions will however be quite varied and many of them could lead to Rome or good training experience.
At EK unfortunately this cannot be applied. The simple reason is that for any situation there is a procedure, briefing, memo, technique, paragraph or FCTM jewel, or simply a ghostly way of 'it has always been done that way' that no one can find anywhere however is religiously followed by the ever increasing TRI/E with 3 months of captaincy and a total of 600h on the LHS.
If you dare to adopt any other procedure, be it the most logical, common sensed and airmanship-proven thing, you will get the ominous 3 and a comment that is was basically ok, BUT .....
Even if Training can surmount this crippling disease, the CP's will uphold their Damocles sword of insane omnipotence, simply not to let common sense gain too much of a stronghold, they'd be eliminated by it too fast.
I see a lot of good aviators, coming from all different types and regions, who within 3 years mutate to EK-Borgs, handling everything through the zillions of books and FCIs. This works as long as it works, and in my opinion EK has been extremely lucky up to today, but for an upgrade such aviation behavior is inadequate.
Contacted nicely described the predominant general attitude towards any work in the SIM. That has been cultivated and it is basically a shame. I do however understand each and every FO trying to get any available information as to be able to reproduce robot-like the exact outline of the right side of the TREs notes.
They simply want to pass the hoops and loops at this company!
Not very encouraging for future hick-ups, but that's the way it is.