So I'd like to hear, then, do people responding to this thread, particularly the 121 guys/gals, think a pilot with 5 failed checkrides under their belt (some primary, some at the 121 level) has any business commanding a 70+ seat turbo prop? This is a serious question, not a throw gas on fire question.
I think you missed the point of my post.
This 121 guy wishes you'd discriminate, and one must look at the whole picture.
I, personally, had 5 busts (had to redo one task each time. I'll give you a hint - it took me a bit to catch on the instruments) on the primary level, and none on the 121 level. So I have some experience on this. One can surmise that there was a pattern. I have had no problems passing initial training or type ratings so far (knock wood).
In my opinion, when you start on a 121 career, it closes the book on the primary training, if you have issues in your past.
Now, if you have issues in primary training and use all your chances during 121 training there is a pattern that needs to be looked at.
Lets say a person busted a PPL, maybe screw up a chandelle on the commercial, goof up a v1 cut in 121 initial, and maybe 5 years later goof up an ADF approach you never ever fly, but have to do every 6 months anyway. Does that make a dangerous pattern?
I've even seen people who have failed 121 programs at airline X and succed well at 121 airline Y.
What about the person that never fails a checkride in primary training but has problems in 121 systems school with a bust, had problems with learning flows and gets an extra sim session or two, pops a ride, retrains passes the ride and requires extra OE hours over what is normally programmed at the airline yet is fully line qualified in the end? Would you want to sit next to this guy, or someone like me?
As someone who is trained to train and evaluate pilots, you should know better than a) taking stock in a news report and letting them form your opinions when they are less informed on the subject matter than you b) looking at a single factor, brought up by someone uninformed, and make a judgement on piloting skills based on that ambiguous snapshot.
The zero failure pilot....some people really are that good, but still strive to be better. Some will think that they can't screw anything up, and to me that's the most dangerous attitude in an airplane.
There was a great post last night about someone who made alot of mistakes and almost became a statistic. However, he was able to recognize his mistakes and become a better and smarter pilot because of it.
I like to think of running a good cockpit as mistake management. We all make mistakes when we fly. The biggest thing is to realize that a mistake is made and correct for it before it becomes an issue. The only thing is, it could be checkride-itis (I had that) where you make a mistake and haven't learned to deal with it, and now you fail a certain task.
So, to really say popped checkrides is the sole cause of a pilot's poor performance is nothing more than voodoo. You have to look at all the factors of the persons performance. Sure there are certain gimmes like failing repeatedly and sliding through a program like cencal's example. But like everything else, you can't look at once tiny snapshot and make a sweeping generalism.
