[OldTownPilot]

There are stll ways to get into a sim at an airline.

A few of us from my station got into the sims at the airline that I work at (as a ramp rat).

One had his Comm, one had a PPL, and the other two were student pilots.
We also knew some of the systems to run the APU, packs and hydraulics, in order to relocate the planes on the ramp before hand so it actually was not too hard flying. We mostly did pattern stuff.

We each had 2 hours in the box to play around. The way our traning is set up is that we pay a fixed amount for X many hours of sim time to an outside company whose facility is accross from our G.O. So in other word it didnt cost the company anything bor for us to go in, since we were downsizing and had guys on furlough then.