That’s the problem. While I enjoy hours of doing nothing except marking up a plotting chart on a published airway, there are times when CPDLC fails. Then what? Had a flight a couple years back, no answer on any of the HFs we were given. Dug up the ARINC page in the Jepps, looked out the window and picked a frequency. San Fran answered immediately and the FO had a priceless look on his face. “How did you do that?”
No, it’s no rocket surgery but when you have a training program that’s more of a differences class for pilots that have experience versus real training in international ops there’ll be problems.