Mach E Avelli wrote:
For example, the old V1 cut and emergency descent are now so well known by most that doing it in a two year cycle should be enough. On the other hand, flight with unreliable airspeed and dealing with severe icing situations could be worth doing at more frequent intervals, perhaps annually. Operators whose crews rarely experience severe icing may disagree with this, but they are possibly more at risk in a real event than those who are accustomed to it.
In other words, tailor the training to the situation rather than use a one size fits all approach to satisfy the regulator. Of course this would require cooperation from the regulator.
Evidence based training is the catch phrase on my street and to my outfits credit they're heading down that path as we speak. Engine failures at 100 feet on takeoff (autopilot off) were in the last two sims. Not that hard but great to see and be confident with.
We are also actively encouraged to practice manual flight under the appropriate environmental conditions and I encourage my F/O's to do it, most of them seem quite chuffed to be offered the chance, which speaks to a long slow cultural change that needs to occur here and elsewhere.
Given all the technology at our hands it's ironic that this is where the bleeding edge of flight safety is these days. At my previous mob we used to be able to access the company owned sim in fixed base conditions with reasonable frequency, I used to look forward to the sims as sport. Now being at a low cost carrier the sim is owned by a third party and that option is no longer available. That fixed base time has now been replaced by incredibly tedious arm chair flying which will never be as good.