I don't know about budgets, but we have certainly extended our Differences course in the sim, by 4 hrs per pilot (8 hrs per crew) IIRC. We have only recently started doing full type ratings on 225 so already had a handle on how long it takes. When its your own Sim in house, adding some extra time doesn't hit the budget much anyway and mercifully the training manager doesn't seem to be under much commercial pressure.
Is it enough time? No, it never is, is it. But certainly courses are much longer than they used to be on 332L etc.
But yes, I think crews are pretty fluent with the automatics. Partial/degraded automation remains more of a problem but fortunately its an aspect of the real aircraft that seems highly reliable (due to lots of redundancy).
Last edited by HeliComparator; 26th Mar 2013 at 23:22.