Originally Posted by
eastcoast
1. How much time on average does a commercial pilot spend in simulator training per year?
Qualification on a new aircraft would involve up to 40-50 hours of sim training, which would be split evenly between pilot flying (PF) and pilot monitoring (PM).
Annual recurrent training for someone who is current on an airplane can vary...
Old School: Emphasis on checking, not training
- First Officer (FO): 4 hours annually, split between PF/PM
- Captain (CA): 4 hours ever six months, split between PF/PM
New Program (FOQA): Emphasis on training/practice
- FO: Two days of ground and sim, about 8 hours sim (some non-motion) split between PF/PM annual
- CA: Same but every six months
- Some companies do both CA and FO every nine months...works out to the same amount of training for the entire pilot group.
You also get classroom training: 16 hours each year (may be 8 hours CBT/ 8 hours classroom)
Originally Posted by
eastcoast
2. Do you have materials to study, such as a manual, that tells you what specific emergency situations you must know for the simulator?
Pilots have a company Flight Ops Manual with generic company procedures, and an aircraft specific SOP. The SOP will have all normal and emergency procedures, as well procedures performed only for training purposes such as steep turns and intentional stalls. You are on your own recognizance to study as much or as little as you need to. Ideally you would study continuously as opposed to cramming for sim sessions. Some procedures you only look at right before sim since you only do them for training (steep turns, intentional stall entry)
Originally Posted by
eastcoast
3. What is the purpose of simulator training? I mean is it to practice emergency situations that cannot be practiced in a real airplane, or is just to improve your communication skills?
1. Practice emergencies which are dangerous to practice in a real airplane.
2. Save money...airliners cost thousands (or tens of thousands of dollars) per hour to operate.
Originally Posted by
eastcoast
For example, in my field of anesthesiology, simulator training is currently required for a very small percentage of practitioners. Those few people who must do simulator training, only need to attend one "workshop" every 10 years. They are given no manual about what scenarios to prepare for so the failure rate is high. However, no grade is given and everyone passes. Apparently, the idea is to learn to "communicate".
Any comments are welcome.
Communication and teamwork are fundamental to operations in a multi-crew cockpit and are always evaluated...you can fail on that alone. We call it CRM: Crew Resource Management
The manuals we use are not just for sim training....we carry them and use them as references in daily operations and for ongoing study, as well as prep for sim.
Maybe you guys need SOPs which are used for daily ops and training. You might have a disconnect between the hospital procedures and what a state board might want for training/certification. The airlines get around this issue by having the FAA (normally responsible for certification) delegate procedures, training, and certification to the individual airlines....the airlines have their own procedures which they train and certify to (with FAA oversight).