Not every pilot who stays near the airport is on a layover. Some are there for a training block: a type rating on a new aircraft, a recurrent check, a command course, or a week of sessions in a full-flight simulator followed by a check ride at the end. Cabin crew attend training courses of their own. A simulator training week near Schiphol has a rhythm quite different from normal flying. The hotel is the same for five or ten nights, the schedule is set by the training centre rather than the roster, and the evenings are filled with study rather than exploring. It is also a week in which a well-placed booking can make a real difference to how the days feel.
The simulator schedule is the fixed point
Simulator time is expensive and used around the clock, so session slots are not always sociable. A four-hour session with briefing and debrief might run from six in the morning, from two in the afternoon, or from ten at night. The slot often changes from one day to the next. That makes the working day the wrong thing to plan around. Plan around the slot instead, and treat the hours after a debrief as your evening, whatever the clock says.
A late-morning slot leaves an ordinary evening free. An early slot means an early bedtime, so any booking belongs in the late afternoon. A night slot turns the afternoon into the only sensible window, and makes the hours after midnight, when you come back to the hotel, a possibility for anyone still wide awake.
Simulator training week near Schiphol: protect the night before a check
Most crews already know this, but it is worth stating plainly. The evening before a check ride or a proficiency check is not an evening for anything that might cost sleep or concentration. Keep it for study, a meal and bed. If you want a booking in the final days, place it on the evening after the check, when the pressure is off and the whole week is behind you. That is the night people tend to enjoy most anyway.
On the easier days in the middle of a block, an evening session is simply a pleasant way to switch off after four hours of engine failures and diversions. Ninety minutes at EUR 270, ending with enough time to review the next day's profile and sleep, is the usual shape.
Studying and the evening booking
Training weeks come with homework: procedures to review, limitations to memorise, the next session's scenarios to brief. The mistake is to leave the studying until after a booking, when you will not want to do it. Do the study first, book for later in the evening, and treat the session as the point at which the books close for the night. Hotels around the airport are arranged rather than served on a standing window, so write in the afternoon once you know the next day's slot.
Training partners in the same hotel
Simulator sessions are flown in pairs, and your training partner is almost certainly staying in the same hotel, often on the same corridor. The usual discretion applies: switch off lock-screen message previews, choose a start time when you are not expected at dinner together, and pay from a personal source rather than any card that goes through an expense process. Payment is made at the door in cash, by card or in crypto, and nothing is taken in advance.
Where training weeks are spent
Aviation training and the offices that support it cluster on the edges of the airport, and trainees tend to stay in business hotels in Hoofddorp, Schiphol-Rijk and Schiphol-Oost, the older aviation side of the airport. The business hotels there are quiet in the evenings, which suits both study and sleep. Some have key-card lifts, so say so in your first message if yours does.
Choosing a format
Hours strapped into a simulator seat, working a sidestick or a yoke and a set of rudder pedals, are not so different from hours on the flight deck. Slow, warm oil work suits the end of such a day. On the evening after a successful check, when the mood is closer to celebration, many people choose something longer or less routine: two hours at EUR 360, or two therapists together at EUR 360 an hour.
A week-long rhythm
Across a block of seven to ten nights, most trainees who book at all book once or twice: an evening in the easy middle of the week and the night after the check. The crew rest page covers the more familiar layover pattern, and the guide to rest days deals with crew based near Schiphol who have days off rather than a training footprint. The rates are the same in all three cases, the booking is confirmed by message in about ten minutes, and every guest must be at least 21.