Sharp upset recovery skills requires current sharp manual handling skills. That topic has been thrashed out on here many times. The current airline philosophy is train pilots to minimum costs; operate to minimum costs. Training for visual approaches costs money; accepting the occasional screw up and G/A costs money. Answer? Better not to do it. Thus the STD line op is automatic. (even that causes screw ups, but that's another thread.) Previously I had learnt visual approaches on the line because that was SOP. Thus the sim tick in the box for upset recovery in the 3 year cycle is rudimentary at best. I've trained in many airlines including the 2 quoted LOCo's. It is rudimentary and tick in the box. If you want to train the scenario properly you spend more time and do it properly. It starts at PPL stage and should continue throughout your career. Close your eyes, induce a sim-preset upset, open eyes and recover. Waste of time. Fly the approach and induce rudder hard-over at 1500' as per real life B737; induce a 25degree nose up at 1200' after an inadvertent real life G/A selection; recover from a rolling stall a la Bergenair B757; these are surprise events that happened, were recoverable, but some died. There are even the asymmetric wing icing roll offs on takeoff that required full rudder to recover. These really happened, not the sim pre-set scenarios. Do it properly or not at all. Indeed that is what all training should be. After 37 years I think there is too much box ticking so as to satisfy the 3 year recurrent training cycle. I tried to introduce the Air Peru blocked static line scenario into the 3 year cycle for flight instruments and unreliable airspeed items. "Would take too long. Not approved." Instead we had a simple pitot block and a no drama demo; not even a landing. Wast of time. Dumbing down.
I watched a Nat Geo construction of the Valujet crash. The closing statement from current NTSB officials was sobering. 8 years earlier the FAA had issued a notice that fire detection & extinguishers should be fitted to cargo holds. The FAA did a cost analysis the matter drifted off the radar. "It took body bags to reignite the issue." That was a closing statement in the program. The Secretary of Transport and Secretary of FAA lost their jobs. I wonder just how serious the various AA's take the issue of basic training that will incur extra cost. There have been too many stall crashes in recent years. Has the response of the AA's been appropriate? Surely us the real jet jockeys should push the desk jockeys into doing their job and insist the job is done properly.
It concerns me that there are captains flying around in jets, and therefore guiding the F/O's, who have only 3000hrs of autopilot time and they are cloning youngsters who have only 500hrs autopilot time. True, you can design out many serious failures; you can build in back up systems; you can reduce the risk of needing an ACE, but one day it will happen and the ACE is not there, and people will ask why not. What have they been learning during all their training?