The airline I do most of my contract sim instructing with has a good training program. Each pilot gets two by two hour handling sessions and two by two hour support sessions each six months. These are training sessions and merely graded 'satisfactory' or 'improvement needed', i.e. non jeopardy.
The third two hour session in the six month cycle follows within a day or two at most after the training and is a proper pass/fail check to the regulator's requirement.
So I tell them we will train hard and check as soft as we can legally get away with. During training they will have strong wind, turbulence, often no autopilot, sometimes no flight director. If someone is struggling with a particular exercise I may reduce the environmental difficulties, by easing up on the turbulence or wind and setting visual conditions for a while. Then we practice it some more until even the most average pilot usually 'gets' it before going in hard again. This may be at the expense of some minor item called up in the syllabus, but that can wait until next time if need be.
On the check ride the weather is set to minimums but turbulence and crosswind wound down to more modest levels.
During the check they can use the automatics except for one raw data approach and go around. Knowing that they trained hard, surprisingly some pilots actually voluntarily disconnect the automatics on approach even when not required to. Such is their confidence. It's a pleasure working with these guys.
Last edited by Mach E Avelli; 26th Oct 2014 at 20:56.