How Do Airline Pilots Train For The Unexpected In 2025?

In the last two days at work, I’ve suffered two engine fires, two rejected take-offs, multiple bird strikes, a brakes failure, a dual hydraulics failure, a major malfunction of all our electrical systems along with a first officer becoming incapacitated in the cockpit. I also had a tyre burst on the runway, and at one stage, I had an inextinguishable fire in the cargo hold and had to evacuate the aircraft. It’s been a heck of a few days. Thankfully, this was all in the simulator!

I’ve been undergoing what’s known as a Licence Proficiency Check (LPC). All airline pilots globally must pass this annual check to keep their licence valid with the aviation authorities. We must also complete an Operators Proficiency Check (OPC) every six months, to ensure our airline is satisfied with our operational standards when things go wrong. The LPC & OPC are combined once a year, with the second OPC session running on its own halfway through the year. Both these checks are conducted in a simulator, during which numerous complex failures and scenarios are thrown at us over multiple days.

So, why do airline pilots undergo this demanding process every six months? First and foremost, it’s to ensure that we can proficiently handle non-standard events. The aviation authorities require that we demonstrate our ability to handle specific failures and emergencies to a safe standard.

Secondly, these sim sessions are an excellent opportunity to help pilots develop. After completing the mandatory part of the sim to satisfy the regulators, individual airlines often throw further scenarios at their pilots to push them to, and sometimes beyond their limits.

Let’s start with how a sim session is run.

The Sim Session

In the weeks leading up to the simulator sessions, we’ll be told which areas the sessions will focus on, giving us a chance to get our heads into the books ahead of time. It may seem crazy to think we have to ‘revise’ for this, but we’ll often be dealing with things we haven’t seen for a long time, so it’s a good idea to check that our technical knowledge is up to scratch in those areas.

A 90-minute classroom brief will precede each 4-hour-long simulator session. During this brief, the instructors will check the level of our knowledge on specific topics, before running through a rough plan of how the next few hours will hopefully unfold. We’ll then jump into the simulator, assuming our normal seating position as captain or first officer. We’re always a full crew in the sim, as we would be in the real aircraft. Usually, both pilots are getting checked at the same time.

When people hear the word ‘simulator’, they usually think of a console-based game. However, our full motion flight training simulators are fully immersive, multi-million dollar machines that sit 15ft in the air, attached to the ground via three large hydraulically actuated legs. These legs allow the simulator to pivot and rotate, providing an incredibly realistic feeling experience to the occupants inside who are ‘flying’ it. These simulators could be easily mistaken for an alien spaceship from the outside.

Inside each of our simulators sits an exact replica of an A320 flight deck. Every button is identical to that on the real thing. In place of the overcast British sky outside the cockpit windows, sits a high-resolution wraparound screen, the edges extending beyond our line of sight to make it even more realistic. All the airports we operate to are mapped on the software, and these simulators can feel so authentic that it’s genuinely easy to forget we’re not sitting in the real thing. It’s not uncommon for pilots to leave the sessions with high heart rates and a sweaty back! Behind the two pilot seats, an examiner controls every aspect of the simulator through an integrated computer screen. This allows them to create failures at the stage of their choosing. Part of their job is also to role-play as both ATC and cabin crew, which can prove highly amusing if they’re willing to give the appropriate accents a go!

After two hours of having failures and scenarios thrown at us, we take a brief break, before jumping back in for the final two hours. We’ll then have a 60-minute de-brief. The debrief is often the most important part, where we methodically work through what we did in the sim. We discuss what went well and what could’ve gone better, before discussing how we could be more effective as a crew going forward. We’ll then return the next day for our second and final day in the sim for another six months.

EBT & Pilot Competencies

Our sessions used to consist of completing a list of mandatory manoeuvres laid out by the aviation authority. The list included engine failures after take-off, rejected take-offs, and various approaches using one engine, but the list rarely changed. Whilst it was great to get lots of experience running these manoeuvres, it felt more like a box-ticking exercise, and we all knew exactly what was coming. Thankfully, the industry has recently discovered a more effective way to train pilots.

Enter Evidence Based Training (EBT). It’s a modern, more adaptive, scenario-based approach to pilot training. It focuses on developing a broad range of pilot competencies rather than just training pilots to complete the manoeuvres required to tick the box for the regulators. EBT also moves away from the traditional ‘checking’ and more towards ‘coaching and developing’. In addition, it uses data-driven insights from real-world events to make the training more relevant.

The nine core competencies we train towards are:

• Knowledge
• Workload management
• Problem-solving & decision-making
• Leadership & teamwork
• Communication
• Application of procedures
• Flight path manual (manually flying the aircraft)
• Flight path automatic (use of the autopilot & automatic systems)
• Situational awareness

The logic behind focusing on training competencies rather than specific events is that competencies can help pilots through a broad range of scenarios. A pilot trained repeatedly on how to handle the mandatory list of manoeuvres traditionally laid out by the regulators will likely be able to execute them to perfection. But what about the endless list of other events that could happen in real life? What if they suffer an engine failure that’s not quite the same as what they’ve repeatedly been given in the sim?

As we’ve seen with the numerous air disasters this year alone, a lot can go wrong in aviation, and it’s rarely predictable or straightforward. Situations are often dynamic, and no two emergency situations are ever exactly the same. To handle events effectively, pilots must be strong in the above competencies. I personally think this move towards EBT is excellent for the industry. My airline is currently transitioning towards full EBT, so our sim checks still include some traditional manoeuvre exercises, but they now also include scenario-based exercises designed to develop our competencies.

As part of the competency development, we’ll usually get one scenario that gives us three failures or issues to deal with, each with a varying level of complexity. We’ll then be given other scenarios that are in line with recent events that have occurred in the industry, or events that are likely to happen in the future (for example, GPS jamming when flying near countries such as Egypt is becoming a common occurrence and it’s great for us to see it in the sim before experiencing it in real life). The examiner will grade us based on competencies, and we’ll then discuss how we can improve our effectiveness in any areas we lack. All our grades and reports are stored in our airline’s training file for the duration of our career there.

Learning Points

As well as being a great place to test ourselves, the sim is also a superb place to make mistakes and learn from them, hopefully preventing us from making them in the real aircraft. In the name of transparency and to emphasise this point, back when I started out flying as a first officer, I was given an event in the sim that required me to conduct a rapid emergency descent whilst in IMC (no visibility out of the window). As we plummeted toward the ground at 5000 feet per minute in thick cloud, the aircraft shouted “Terrain, Terrain, Pull Up!”. To this day I remember the feeling of my stomach dropping as we heard the order, indicating we were seconds away from impacting terrain.

I followed the correct recovery technique and avoided any collision. However, walking away from the simulator, knowing the only thing that stopped a crash that day was our aircraft’s last line of defence, was a sobering and, quite frankly, horrible feeling. Although it was just a simulator, it still shook me up and taught me the importance of maintaining high situational awareness during stressful events. Let me tell you, from that day onwards, I became ultra-aware of the highest terrain in our area at all times. It’s now one of the first things I check when commencing an emergency descent, and I believe that mistake in the sim has made me a better pilot.

Quite understandably, some pilots dread going into the simulator. Not only is it stressful having such an array of emergency scenarios thrown at us under what are essentially examination conditions, but our licence and therefore career that we’ve devoted so much towards, are on the line each time. If we fail a sim check, airlines will usually offer re-training and allow us to take another check, but if someone isn’t performing on several consecutive attempts, the job we’ve devoted so much towards is likely to be terminated. It sounds ruthless, but it has to be when there are potentially lives at stake.

At the start of my career, I dreaded the sims too. As time’s gone on, however, I’ve come to enjoy them. I go into them knowing what I want out of them, which is usually to build my confidence in any areas I feel need developing, or that I want to become more effective in. It helps that our training department is top notch. Although I’m employed by a low-cost airline, the training they provide is certainly anything but. In fact, they’re widely regarded as having the highest training standards amongst all airlines in the UK.

Hopefully, this has given you an overview of our simulator sessions and why we conduct them. In a future article, I’ll detail exactly how we handle emergencies, along with the structures and methods we use to help us arrive at a safe outcome each time.