Unusual attitude recovery (in a PA28), was part of my ATPL syllabus, as I hope it was for many others.
(For any who don't know; at a suitable safe altitude you would take your hands and feet off the controls and close your eyes while the instructor would put the aircraft into an unusual attitude - nose high, nose low, plus bank etc. On command of "recover", you would open your eyes and by reference to the instruments would have to quickly return the aircraft to straight and level flight and correct speed).
This was a very useful exercise. However, I have never done this in any airliner SIM that I have flown. (I did once spin a Shed for real, but that's another story.....).
We also did instrument exercises involving a series of 360 turns, linked with straight sections and including climbs and desents; Ours were called pattern A and pattern B. These had to be practised and then flown accurately under test conditions. Again, I have never done anything like this in an airliner SIM.
From my many years of airline flying and recurrent LPC/OPCs I think that TRI/TRE's get so wrapped up with the compay's program, the SOP's and the 'flavour of the month', that the basics are given very scant regard. We do do manual flying with no flight directors, but that is usually carefully controlled under radar vectors to an ILS, so it doesn't involve much attitude change.
Last edited by Uplinker; 30th Jan 2015 at 07:44.