Airline hiring story…..what do you think?

natid82

Always learning
Hello fellow aviators!

I recently had a phone conversation with a former student pilot of mine, who told me about an exchange he had during a checkride with a DPE regarding a pilot hired at a major LLC airline in the US.

While this is not a first hand story, it does raise some questions about employment and interviews, I wonder what you all think.

A pilot is interviewing for a job at an airline is denied work and reported to the FAA due to a requirement not being fulfilled towards his/her commercial certificate. The requirement in question was the long XC (250nm straight line).The pilot lost all his CPL, CFI, CFII, MEI certificates (revoked). Here are my quesions:

1) Who’s responsibility was it to ensure the student pilot (before the commercial ride) was eligible to take the checkride? Student, CFI, DPE, 141 school?

2) I know airlines look for ATP minimums and checkride failures on the logbook review, but so they go into every rating and verify all the hours? Seems like a lot of work. (My personal somewhat uneducated guess is that something must have triggered that review, a past incident with the airline etc….)

3) With a revoked license stain on his record, what are the chances of the pilot being hired to fly professionally at an airline again? Are all revocations treated equally by the airlines, or would recruiters be open to hear specifics of a revocation such as the one above?

4) Have you ever heard this story, or similar ones?

Thanks for chiming in. As a CFI who’s working on my ATP minimums I am intrigued by this story, and wanted to dive a bit deeper into this question, and also be able to answer similar questions if those were ever presented to me.

Fly safely!
 
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...a former student pilot of mine, who told me about an exchange he had during a checkride with a DPE regarding a pilot hired at a major LLC airline in the US.

This is a made up story by the DPE trying to instill fear (or maybe encouraging them to read the PTS or whatever it's called now) into a checkride applicant. No airline (especially a major lcc) is going to dig into a logbook to that depth unless the whole thing looked faked.

It is the responsibility of the logbook holder to ensure everything in the logbook is accurate.
 
I tend to agree with you. The assumption was the logbook was accurate, but missed requirements.
 
It's really odd that everyone is so worried about logbooks in the interview. I never understood that. Maybe I wasn't stressed enough or something.

Anyways, welcome to the industry of 90% rumors that aren't true. They will never end no matter which path you take, lol.
 
At Eagle they looked at stuff like total time and PIC. For example: a corporate pilot had 500 total multi-engine hours and also had 500 hours of multi-engine PIC. (I made up the number, but they were the same)

They said that’s impossible, because it is, and his defense was “I got that rating in the 80’s, I have no idea which hours shouldn’t be logged as PIC!” Which, is hilarious, because it’s pretty easy to tell. Before checkride? Not PIC. After checkride? Maybe PIC.

The other technique I’ve heard of is ensuring your single-engine and multi-engine totals add up to your total time. Assuming you don’t have other time logged.

I tabbed checkrides in my logbooks and handed them over before my interview at my legacy and they never mentioned anything or asked any questions. I keep meticulous records and have been very careful with my logbooks. I don’t expect that was a significant part of their lack of interest.

As to the question of who’s responsibility it is, without any legal interpretation or working knowledge of the regulations, I would say the student first but most importantly the CFI. I agree with the others though, doesn’t sound like a true story.
 
When I went for my Commercial Single check ride (the only one we had to do with a DPE at my school), the examiner found an error before we even started. He told me we couldn't do the check ride that day. When I had done my long dual cross country for my commercial, my previous instructor and I had filed IFR and logged instrument time (I was instrument rated) on that flight. I didn't know that wasn't allowed and my instructor never corrected the situation. When he saw that, we didn't even begin the check ride. He told me go do a STRICTLY VFR cross country and he'd be back next week.

I jumped in a plane that night, did a cross country VFR with my current instructor and the DPE came back out the next week and we did the check ride. No problems.

I don't believe this story, as I think any DPE would have caught it. Also, I've been through many interviews in my career (with LCCs, ACMIs, legacies, etc), including what is considered to be the toughest interview in the industry, and none of them have really combed over my logbooks. I got said toughest job.
 
Hello fellow aviators!

I recently had a phone conversation with a former student pilot of mine, who told me about an exchange he had during a checkride with a DPE regarding a pilot hired at a major LLC airline in the US.

While this is not a first hand story, it does raise some questions about employment and interviews, I wonder what you all think.

A pilot is interviewing for a job at an airline is denied work and reported to the FAA due to a requirement not being fulfilled towards his/her commercial certificate. The requirement in question was the long XC (250nm straight line).The pilot lost all his CPL, CFI, CFII, MEI certificates (revoked). Here are my quesions:

1) Who’s responsibility was it to ensure the student pilot (before the commercial ride) was eligible to take the checkride? Student, CFI, DPE, 141 school?

2) I know airlines look for ATP minimums and checkride failures on the logbook review, but so they go into every rating and verify all the hours? Seems like a lot of work. (My personal somewhat uneducated guess is that something must have triggered that review, a past incident with the airline etc….)

3) With a revoked license stain on his record, what are the chances of the pilot being hired to fly professionally at an airline again? Are all revocations treated equally by the airlines, or would recruiters be open to hear specifics of a revocation such as the one above?

4) Have you ever heard this story, or similar ones?

Thanks for chiming in. As a CFI who’s working on my ATP minimums I am intrigued by this story, and wanted to dive a bit deeper into this question, and also be able to answer similar questions if those were ever presented to me.

Fly safely!

Relevant to my interests as a CFI also working toward ATP mins.

This smells a lot like what @BobDDuck said. And it also reminds me of a conversation @Fly_Unity and I had about the nuances of logging PIC vs. acting PIC. I will admit that my understanding of the reg was faulty at the time. I've since revised both the way I teach it and the way I encourage my students to keep/log time.
 
This is a made up story by the DPE trying to instill fear (or maybe encouraging them to read the PTS or whatever it's called now) into a checkride applicant. No airline (especially a major lcc) is going to dig into a logbook to that depth unless the whole thing looked faked.

It is the responsibility of the logbook holder to ensure everything in the logbook is accurate.
Yeah, the only job that looked in any great detail at mine was the first one, and then the Mormons again when it was time to issue an ATP. After that it was like "cool," a cursory page-through and tossing into a pile with the rest of my stuff while they proceeded to more important matters.
 
The 250NM cross country requirement for the instrument rating caused some issues at my old school. Since instructors would teach students in both Part 61 and 141 programs, they'd often forget about the 100NM straight line requirement in Part 141 instrument programs as Part 61 doesn't have that stipulation in the reg (IIRC). The DPE's would almost always catch this, among other logbook discrepancies.

I can't imagine an airline digging that deep into individual flights without first noticing a red flag or two.
 
When I went for my Commercial Single check ride (the only one we had to do with a DPE at my school), the examiner found an error before we even started. He told me we couldn't do the check ride that day. When I had done my long dual cross country for my commercial, my previous instructor and I had filed IFR and logged instrument time (I was instrument rated) on that flight. I didn't know that wasn't allowed and my instructor never corrected the situation. When he saw that, we didn't even begin the check ride. He told me go do a STRICTLY VFR cross country and he'd be back next week.

I jumped in a plane that night, did a cross country VFR with my current instructor and the DPE came back out the next week and we did the check ride. No problems.
...

I am not sure when you did your checkride, but in 2009, they removed the requirements that the dual cross country requirements for the commercial had to be flown VFR only.
 
Why do people in this business insist on spreading weird stories to try to scare the crap out of everyone? It reminds me of when everyone was nervous about having to go through the new AQP program and there was a rumor that "omg the failure rate is 50%!" The company finally had to come out and say "guys... nobody has gone through AQP yet. Stahp."
 
Great discussion guys.
Still interested in the FAA side of things, even if hypothetical.
Say someone finds out a requirement was not met, and it was not discovered by the school, student, CFI and DPE at the time.
What would the ramification be? And is it a career ender?
Have a warm day!
 
I recently interviewed a CFI and during review of his logbook noticed not 1 of his pages were signed yet he had taken all his checkrides up to that point. Found it odd not one DPE didn’t catch it. Didn’t hire him anyway because he showed up in a t shirt and couldn’t answer the most rudimentary FAR questions a ppl should know ‍
 
I recently interviewed a CFI and during review of his logbook noticed not 1 of his pages were signed yet he had taken all his checkrides up to that point. Found it odd not one DPE didn’t catch it. Didn’t hire him anyway because he showed up in a t shirt and couldn’t answer the most rudimentary FAR questions a ppl should know ‍
Where's the requirement to sign each page of your logbook or any entry, for that matter?
 
Based on the amount of weird stuff I’ve seen done by airliners going into smaller airports, if knowledge of “rudimentary” FARs was mandatory they’d have a lot fewer pilots.
How about instead of an astronaut interview for a $35k job they just require an ATP, not have to worry about logbooks, and pay what an ATP is worth? Oh, right, that’s unsustainable. Hence the “pilot shortage.” I counter by saying the “regionals” flying planes the size of early 737s and DC-9s is unsustainable. East Podunk, NE can get Cape Air and Less Podunk, OH can get one 737 instead of three CRJs.
 
Based on the amount of weird stuff I’ve seen done by airliners going into smaller airports, if knowledge of “rudimentary” FARs was mandatory they’d have a lot fewer pilots.
How about instead of an astronaut interview for a $35k job they just require an ATP, not have to worry about logbooks, and pay what an ATP is worth? Oh, right, that’s unsustainable. Hence the “pilot shortage.” I counter by saying the “regionals” flying planes the size of early 737s and DC-9s is unsustainable. East Podunk, NE can get Cape Air and Less Podunk, OH can get one 737 instead of three CRJs.
How about showing up to ones first aviation interview prepared and knowing basics taught in ppl ground school? Ppl knowledge is not an astronaut interview. Far from it.
 
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