I don't fly rotary,. but there are 2 things from recent days that I feel I can comment on,
The first is to ask the question why rotary wing, with its ability to go forward, backwards, and if necessary nowhere fast is constrained to use facilities and procedures that were designed and intended for use by fixed wing aircraft that cannot do some of the things that rotary do extremely well. Yes, I'm sure that there will be screams of "beancounters" or similar, and I have copped that holding in a hover and letting down is a bad thing to do because of Vortex ring, which I will admit to not having heard about before this thread, but the question is still valid, with the modern aids available, and apparently installed on the most recent rotary wing machines, it should (in theory) be possible and feasible to approach a landing point from any direction and using pretty much any profile, the only limiting factors being the final transition to visual for landing, obstacle clearance and the ability of ATC to manage a much less structured system as a result.
Simulators, and this is an area I did some very specialised work in, for research rather than training, so the device was being used or operated by type rated crews that were not under training, they were being used to research possible new alerting or warning system responses.
The biggest hurdles I had to overcome, working with one of the partners of a major European manufacturer, was getting accurate information about how some of the aircraft systems really worked. Then there was the issue of fidelity of the device, the people carrying out the research were not fully aware of how important some of the underlying memory procedures are, and that if their device did not accurately replicate the real thing, a crew carrying out a memory items check list would be thrown by a non standard device, invalidating the research,
There is a fundamental requirement that what happens in the sim should transfer to the real thing without gotchas, and if there are gotchas, then the sim really should not be used for those areas, people do what they've been trained to do, not what they did with differences. Then there's the issue of the cost of getting the devices or components for the sim, we were replicating a complete overhead panel for a commercial twin jet, and the cost of buying the genuine dual illuminated switches would have been more than the total budget we had available, so we had to make them.
As has been mentioned, some procedures, concepts and training can be carried out without a level D, I did a system for a major airline that needed an MCC device that used Flight Sim 4, so a long time ago, but it worked very well and achieved the required result, but when it comes to type specific, then the fidelity and replication and response of the training device has to provide the same result as will happen in the real thing, and if it does not, then the sim has to be changed.
A long time ago, I made the comment that the day I saw a Windows logo on a flight deck would be the day I stopped flying on that aircraft type, and I've seen nothing at all to make me change that view, and that's after nearly 30 years working with PC level systems.
There are clearly some very experienced and skilled people contributing to this thread, it's a pity that they have not been brought together by either the CAA, AAIB or the operators for a round table discussion of the bigger picture, with the caveat that the discussions should be confidential for now, and that all opinions are valid.
A long time ago, someone said that what's needed is a shields down approach, and it looks to me like it's not quite there yet, and things like commercial competitive pressure, non aviation beancounters, legal eagle paranoia and simple fear factor are preventing this from happening in a timely manner. Maybe the regulatory side needs to mandate such meetings, so that they have to happen, but somehow, some of the issues that this thread is highlighting need to be addressed for the well being of the industry and more importantly, its passengers.
And yes, but not for this thread, some of the issues the NS is facing with rotary ops are also happening in fixed wing ops across the globe, they've been mentioned, and in some ways leave me cold, and I see little enthusiasm from the regulators to address them, which is scary, I spend more time as SLF than as a driver these days, so if I am letting someone else do the driving, I really want to be sure that they do have the skills to get me where I want to get to, and not end up in a smoking hole or worse somewhere unexpected due to lack of core skills or type specific understanding.