First, congratulations if you have an airline simulator assessment coming up.
You have survived the CV sift, impressed at interview, passed the Maths and English tests, and come through the Group Exercises. By this stage in the process the powerful Personnel Department believe that you are temperamentally a good fit for their airline culture. All that remains is the simulator assessment.
The airline likes you and they probably want to be able hire you. All that now needs to be established is that you are a reasonable training risk.
As this is the final hurdle between you and a job, the stakes could not get higher. The costs and consequences of rejection at this stage, financially and professionally, are enormous, and made more devastating because any rejection will come directly from your pilot peers, rather than the more occupationally remote, non-pilot personnel officers.
Just as you would not dream of attending an interview without thorough preparation, you would not want to attend a simulator assessment without robust prior preparation and practice.
Airline simulator assessments are typically 30 to 45 minutes long. You will normally be given a handout detailing the manoeuvres that you will be asked to perform in the simulator. The guidance will probably include some extremely basic Standard Operating Procedures which will show you how to carry out those manoeuvres along with some essential pitch, thrust and configuration settings.
The purpose of the simulator assessment is to assess if your flying ability is such that you can complete a Type Rating Course or Operator Conversion Course within the minimum course footprint, with a particular focus on your:
Capacity (Can you think, fly, talk, apply procedures, and learn lots of new material at the same time?)
Control
Spatial Awareness
Basic Instrument Flying
Cockpit Resource Management
If you have not flown for some time or have not operated in the aeroplane type being used for the assessment, then all the above areas can be very rapidly developed by practising the test profile in the period leading up to your assessment.
For example, a hand-flown raw data ILS flown for the first time, even by very experienced pilots in the simulator, can be at best an embarrassing, rough and ragged 2 out of 10, exploring the limits of tolerance for the glideslope, localiser, and speed. However, after 3 or 4 practice runs to get the scan and control feel, most of us average folk rapidly improve up to a very respectable 8 out of 10.
More importantly, as well as the basic flying rapidly improving with practice, fewer demands are now being made on you, releasing that spare capacity for you to showcase your cockpit resource management skills. A couple of hours of practice makes the difference between selection and rejection.
To help you with your forthcoming simulator assessment, we can structure a 2-hour simulator training session to optimise your performance.
Using a Level D Full Flight Simulator at Burgess Hill, we will go through your assessment profile in the classroom and then fly the profile in the simulator, giving you all the tips and techniques that will optimise your chances of success.
A 2-hour simulator training session with briefing and debriefing is £650. To maximise your confidence, we suggest 2 training sessions spread over 2 days.
If you have a simulator assessment coming up, please contact Tim Hallett on 02476 639222 or 07775 715501 for a no-obligation discussion about how we can help ensure you excel on this critical day.