Sim Inadequacy

Frank Bowlin

Monday, November 14, 2022 at 03:35 PM ET

Verified

Image Courtesy of Garmin

Key Takeaways:

Certified aviation training devices (sims) often fail to accurately mimic modern, upgraded aircraft panels, limiting their value for maintaining proficiency.
Despite these panel replication issues, simulators are superior to in-aircraft training for safely and realistically practicing a wide range of critical failures that are impractical or unsafe to simulate in an actual airplane.
The FAA's "certification-as-a-whole" process for ATDs is identified as the reason certified sims remain basic and unrealistic, as it prevents the practical integration of custom or updated avionics.
Given these limitations, the recommended compromise is a hybrid approach: recurrent sim training focusing on failures, coupled with avionics practice and approaches conducted in the actual aircraft.

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Often I’ve railed against the inability of approved aviation training devices (sims) to mimic the aircraft we fly. If your panel has had any upgrades, you’ll generally not find a sim that comes close. This limits the value of sim training in maintaining proficiency for your aircraft.

So, why not train in your airplane? Training for complex aircraft is inferior in the airplane. In the sim you can trigger countless failures, an engine-driven fuel pump for example, that just can’t be created in the air. So, your instructor simply covers an instrument, or announces, “Oil pressure failure on the left engine.” In reality, those are often slow, subtle failures that can go unnoticed. If the instructor announces it, much of the training value is lost.