Simulation in the service of aviation training

/ Why simulate?

Simulation makes it possible to practise situations that are rare, costly or dangerous to reproduce on a real aircraft: failures, degraded conditions, emergency procedures, work on systems unavailable in the hangar.

It makes training repeatable and observable: the instructor can freeze, replay and analyse a sequence.

/ Benefits

• Safety: errors have no consequence for people or equipment.
• Availability: training does not depend on grounding an aircraft.
• Standardisation: identical scenarios for all trainees.
• Traceability: session recording supports competence monitoring.
• Coverage of rare cases: failures and abnormal situations.

/ Limits

• Partial fidelity: no device reproduces everything (sensations, gestures, environment).
• Bounded regulatory credits: the share of training achievable in a simulator depends on the device type, its qualification and the approved programme.
• Costs of acquisition, updates and maintaining qualification.
• Risk of negative transfer if the device differs from the aircraft and the gap is not addressed in training.
• Specific instructor competences are required.