A few months ago, Capt. Alon Pereg,  who was about to command the next 737NG pilot's course of EL AL airlines, had an idea - the trainees could practice Airliner procedures, 737 automation (FMC) and ATC communications during the ground school stages of the course by flying online. He approached Kobi David, Vatsim Israel's CEO. Alon and Kobi went to the home cockpit of a Vatsim member, and took the PMDG 737 for a ride. Alon was very impressed with this demonstration, and now the ball was at his hands.

Now, seven months later, members of VATIL, the Israeli branch of vatsim.net Virtual Air Traffic Flight Simulation Network, are part of the view in the training center. One of their main tasks is to help air force fighter pilots to switch from F16 to Boeing 767. Some of Vatil instructors are 17 years old, which means they may not even have a driver license.

Captain Rubin, an instructor says that VATIL members have vast knowledge. They know the flight procedures and cockpit instrumentation as well as flight patterns and rules in every major airport.

"If you close your eyes and listen to the virtual flight controllers speak with the virtual pilots you'll be convinced that you're in a real flight control center. Even the intonation and sense of tension in the air is the same" says Alon Pereg.

Members of VATIL have set up a cockpit mockup that looks just like a real modern jet cockpit. They used proprietary software and commercial software to set up a simulator and built training procedures around it. The system is used to give new pilots a better preparation at the early stages of training before they enter the real simulators. This part of the training was done using presentations before.

According to Rubin, the level of a pilot that did the early training with the VATIL member's simulator and training is equal to a pilot that did 5 real flights.

Sources: 

Yedioth Aharonot, Israeli news paper
http://www.vatil.org/