Check Ride Failure

crfguy51 said:
I think part of the 'problem' is that we only hear half the story, from the applicant who "was busted" by big bad DPE so-and-so. A few weeks ago I talked to a guy who busted a checkride for exceeding the flap limitation by "one or two knots", after talking to the DE it was 30 knots and had forgot to do a landing checklist and turn the on the xpndr and pumps on that takeoff.
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+1

I've seen this quite a lot as a USAF instructor pilot. More often than I wish were true, students who bust checkrides (or wash out of programs, etc) aren't honest with themselves about what happened.

An interesting aspect of this is that sometimes the student doesn't have the situational awareness to correctly perceive what actually happened. In the situation we're hypothesizing here, the student could honestly believe that they only saw "one or two knots" when in actuality it was the 30 knots that the examiner saw. In this case, the "truth data" supports the examiner, but the student in his mind thinks it was something else based on his perception of events. That's the basis of that adage, "perception is reality."

I'm lucky in the USAF fighter business that we have a HUD tape and sometimes ACMI data to go back and reconstruct what happened; we generally don't have to leave it to the "he said, she said" disagreements between what the instructor thought happened and what the student thought happened.
 
Hacker15e said:
More often than I wish were true, students who bust checkrides (or wash out of programs, etc) aren't honest with themselves about what happened.

An interesting aspect of this is that sometimes the student doesn't have the situational awareness to correctly perceive what actually happened.
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IMHO - the fact is that whether the "student" believes they were 'wronged' doesn't really matter anymore. The facts are the facts and the consequences all the same. You can't 'un-do' a failed checkride or failed 'test':). Best you can do is be ready for the next time and perform above and beyond. Honestly speaking - I've had checkrides where I should have failed, but the examiner threw me a bone when he didn't have to. I've also had "tests" where I honestly believed I was "wronged" (wish I had a 'HUD' tape from that one!). Either way, it is what it is. Time to move on and push harder, faster, stronger.
 
TWP said:
Multiple checkride failures do correlate directly with a persons attitude. 1 or 2 busts, fine, but when you hit 3,4,..... that shows that you obviously arn't taking this seriously enough. It tells the world you arn't preparing enough for your rides and signing up for them anyway.
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Or there is a fundamental flaw in your understanding of how to make an airplane go. And that's the *really* dangerous part.
 
Mike H said:
50+ checkrides? How many type ratings have you got anyway?
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I have three type ratings. No matter; I can't recall how many checkrides I've taken but it probably exceeds 50. I have two jobs, one as an Air Force Reservist and the other as a Part 121 Supplemental Air Carrier pilot. Both jobs require annual sim and/or line/no-notice checkrides. So far this year, I've taken three checkrides (one sim and line check with the civilian job, one instructor sim check in the military, and another in the jet coming very shortly). In addition to that, I have to take another sim instrument/qual check and aerial refueling check in the next few months and probably a no-notice as we're due an aircrew stan/eval visit. Just in the first year of service, a typical Air Force pilot takes around 10 checkrides (not including PPL or whatever else he might already have). The bottom line is that you never stop getting evaluated as a professional pilot. Some folks have spent more time under the microscope than others, so it seems kind of ridiculus to me to draw the line at two (or whatever) number of failures regardless of the person's background.
 
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