Thai Airways operations chief tells APATS pilots need training in judgment, not just checklists

Speaking at APATS 2026 in Bangkok, Thai Airways chief of operations Captain Chawan Ratanawaraha argued that conventional simulator training can leave pilots underprepared for failures that fall outside scripted checklists. He described his own MD-11 simulator session in which he completed every step of an emergency procedure after a simulated all-engine flameout, but was later challenged by an instructor for not restarting the engines once the checklist's steps ran out — "the checklist ended," he said, "but the problem remained." He cited two real-world cases to make the same point: a Boeing 747 crew that used a non-standard method to work around a hydraulic failure, and the crew of a DHL Airbus A300 struck by a missile over Baghdad in 2003, who regained control using differential engine thrust rather than any documented procedure. Captain Chawan laid out five capabilities he believes resilient pilots need beyond procedural knowledge: understanding the aircraft itself, prioritising competing problems, deciding under uncertainty, coordinating with the rest of the crew, and what he called "recovery thinking" — continuing to search for a way to survive once standard responses are exhausted. He linked the argument to newer risks simulators rarely rehearse, including geopolitical conflict, GNSS jamming and increasingly interconnected aircraft systems, and urged instructors to stop treating the simulator's own boundaries as the limit of a pilot's thinking.