Situation Awareness (SA) is a notion currently evoked to talk about the failure of human reliability in critical situations, which can lead to accidents. Whilst a plethora of data has been gathered on situation awareness, its theoretical status has been questioned for long: is it a psychological variable or rather simply a “label” to describe complex systems failures? In fact, SA has demonstrated to be a useful descriptive tool, but it may turn out to be misleading if not properly characterized. Simulation is a common practice in aviation for many reasons, but it is far from being completely granted: what do we mean by the term “simulation fidelity”? What epistemological and methodological difficulties may we expect when using simulation for research purposes? To what extent we may trust training simulation results in relation to the real operational world? In this talk we present a research carried out at ENAV Academyin Forlì, the training department of ENAV (Ente Nazionale Assistenza al Volo), the Italian Air Traffic Management organization. On that occasion, an Italian-language version of a set of tools recommended by EUROCONTROL, the European Air Traffic Control Authority was tested in two independent samples of air traffic controllers trainees and instructors. A relevant body of data was gathered and has been interpreted.