MORRISTOWN SIM
Great training facility that's beginning to lose its edge. Sim instructors are highly knowledgeable and very helpful. Ground school is very informative and updating.
However, there has been an attitude shift among the evaluators towards the negative side of the spectrum.
1. You you receive your flight plan for the 2 hour evaluation about 5 minutes prior to the flight ---during the oral evaluation. While many who live and fly in the JFK/LAGUARDIA/NEWARK are highly familiar with the routes, procedures, VFR flight corridors, and approaches, others, are at best, vaguely familiar with the procedures.
2. Would you accept this flight in real life with 5 minutes to plan? This would be a very poor judgement call and should be grounds to fail the evaluation on the spot before ever getting into the aircraft.
3. Would the FAA approve of such behavior? The inherent training value of getting the flight plan hours before, or, even the day before is lost. Making it a common and acceptable practice in giving such a short notice for planning sets one up with a false sense of security of the "macho" CRM personality type and absolutely should not be cultivated in the aviation community.
4. JFK/LAGUARDIA/NEWARK is an extremely high density traffic area over a densely populated geographic location, serious consideration and emphasis of proper flight planning should be emphasized in the simulator just as it would be in the aircraft --"real life training".
5. Multiple simultaneous emergencies while being intentionally disoriented is teaching crisis management rather than a controlled a methodical approach to aircraft emergencies.
6. This method of evaluation has morphed into solving a Rubic's Cube with a 5 minute time constraint---followed by the inevitable and very serious consequences.