Confusion; Distraction; Human-Machine Interface; Training / Qualification
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Company Policy; Environment - Non Weather Related
First eight (8) events of the new Aircraft Qualification Course are done in the Fixed Base Training device. There is only one device available; and is unusable due to routine and fatal maintenance issues. We are two First Officers (FO) transitioning from Captain (CA) in our previous aircraft to FO in the new aircraft. Both very experienced and very familiar with the expected standards for our Training. This device; and the way the device and training are managed; is not up to standard. We have completed 6 of our events; one of which was not completed due to maintenance. Every event has had maintenance issues. These issues required a reset by the instructor (both before and during the event) that takes 10 minutes or more. Often; the instructor will end the pre-brief early to go start a reset so that the device will be ready when we report. Routinely; the device requires local maintenance to perform their own reset that takes between 30-60 minutes. Once; we had to terminate our training and have our schedule 'rolled right' adding 4 days to our training footprint. These maintenance issues routinely steal one (1) hour to 1.5 hours of our allotted four hours of training time. Maintenance issues we've seen and routinely deal with include:1) Displays freezing. 2) Nav tuning issues that preclude flying an approach (won't tune/auto-tune)3) Random EICAS distraction messages 'Ignore that; it's a bug'; these include Fire Warning and Takeoff Configuration displays and alarms.4) ACARS data loads (FMC Uploads) that fail; don't 'take'; drop randomly or require starting-over loading the FMC. Is that something I did wrong/incorrectly or a bug?5) Routine visual issues. There is a known and 'given' (accepted as ok) display issue that projects to one of the pilots a 30 degrees off-axis view that is very distracting and causes vertigo. This cannot be reset and no attempt is made to repair this.6) Both HUDS are unusable. They are off-axis with the seats and cause double-images (symbols cannot be resolved to a single object). Note that the use of the (new-to-us) HUD is required below 18;000 feet and transitioning pilots are encouraged and expected to integrate this into their scan and cross-check. I have found myself sick to my stomach and I realized today that I knew walking into the device that I would have a wicked headache when we were done - because I always feel ill in this device.We had three separate resets to no effect. Maintenance performed a reset but it didn't fix anything. We had a frozen ND display on my side that required me to fly cross-cockpit to the PM's split ND display. The comical and sad thing is that he has to use that display to run checklists and EICAS so I had to wait quietly for him to finish his checks so I could try to grab a little SA as to where we were. We also spent most of our 2-hour pre-brief discussing how to work-around the device issues. For example; instead of seeing VNAV ; we were told to expect VNAV ALT due to a device limitation. This meant we had to modify the (new-to-us) approach mnemonic to 'trick' the device into allowing us to fly the desired approach. 'You'd never do this in real life; but here's the best way to fly this in the device.' To be clear; our first exposure and learning practice was to do it wrong for eight device events because the device doesn't work.The other issue here is the pressure on both the students and instructors to cut the syllabus short and speed-run through events to try to fit everything into a shortened period. We routinely bang-out a maneuver from close-in with no setup or any of the normal timing that is inherent in flying a full pattern and accomplishing all of the normal checklist; flows and procedures. I have looked-back on an event and realized that; although we pre-briefed a drift-down engine failure; we never actually did it. Either of us. And that may be our only look in this hyper-compressed syllabus. A syllabus that requires two FOs to split theseat and flying time; effectively halving our training exposure.This is not a training staff issue. The folks we have had as instructors have been exemplary. Truly top-notch guys and real professionals. Professionals that are being put in an impossible position and pressured to progress students through to mask device and management failures. This is a systemic issue; driven by management's failure to provide an acceptable device and abrogating their duties to their instructors and students. There is a real and critical problem here- a training device that actually is worse for the students than no training at all. It is imposing 'negative training' because we're not doing it right and we're learning techniques to accommodate a broken device; instead of the SOP and profiles/procedures that we are supposed to be internalizing.
Air carrier First Officer reported negative training due to maintenance issues and malfunctions with the fixed-base training device used for transition training to a new aircraft.