Really long PPL check rides?

rframe

rframe

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I'm not sure if this is a local phenomena, but we've had some DPE's who have been conducting some really long PPL check rides. I find this really frustrating and see no point to it. It seems to me that if you cannot figure out how knowledgeable a PPL candidate is within 1.5 hours, then you're failing to do your job. I had one student who did a 4 hour oral and when I checked in (assuming it was going terrible due to length) the DPE said it was going excellent and the student was very well prepared... so I'm thinking "WTF are you doing then?!". Had another one yesterday that was 6 hours from start to finish for the whole check ride. The poor guy was mentally exhausted and pretty frustrated by the end. Talked to another instructor who said one of the DPE's who just retired here was notorious for marathon length PPL orals.

Dont get me wrong, I'm not advocating hand-me-out freebie check rides, but its not that hard to determine if someone knows what they are doing or not.

What am I missing?

Has anybody else experienced this? Is there some underlying initiative being pushed by the Feds? Failure quotas?
 
No, that is ridiculous. That's longer than my CFI oral... A private pilot candidate should have the oral complete in less than an hour if they have their act together.
 
That is ridiculous. I regularly conduct private pilot checkrides as an EOC examiner at a large 141 school and I rarely go over two hours. The examiner's job is to evaluate what the applicant does or doesn't know and determine whether or not it meets the PTS. It's not the examiners job to nit pick every small detail for hours on end. That's just bad form.

I can tell in the first 10 minutes whether the applicant has his/her stuff together or not.
 
OK, I feel the same way but wanted to check myself with others here and make sure I wasn't really missing something.
 
But what can you really do about it? Call the FSDO? They likely won't give you any kind of relief on the issue? Change examiners maybe?
 
It's been about a year since I've had anyone do a checkride, but the last one was with an examiner from the college there. He passed and did well but the examiner spent a lot of time with me like it was my first trip to the rodeo as an instructor. At that point I think I had about 15 checkrides signed off.
 
I think my private consisted of a 45 minute oral and 1.1 on the hobbs. Come to think of it, even my CFI oral was only 2.5 hours.
 
My PPL oral was around 5 hours, with about 1.5 in flight and an additional 30 min or so talking on the ground afterwards. Total time: 7 hours. Then I had to fly back to my home airport. :(
 
Where are you? I'm in michigan and just had a student go through a 6 hour private pilot....
 
That's absurd. My PPL oral was 1 maybe 1.5 hrs, instrument was 2, commercial was 3, CFI was around 5

A friend of mine had a CFI oral that was 17 hours long, over the course of two days, AND he passed.
 
Yea thats absurd. Ive never worked for a school, so i would just never use that dpe again... Is that not an option? Do u have to use them?
 
What the hell could they even be asking with that long of an oral. I busted my first PPL oral within 30minutes, the second was about 3 hours for the entire checkride with a good bit of BSing with the DPE.
 
A lot depends on the examiner's approach. I've seen checks where is takes a half-hour just to get the applicant calmed down enough to begin the check and I've also seen it take a half hour just to correct all of the errors on the front of the 8710-1.

There is a liability exposure and a moral responsibility anytime one affixes their signature to an endorsement, recommendation, or temporary certificate. As a recommending instructor, I take that very seriously. If the examiner takes it seriously too, that's not only fine with me, that's the way I want it.

However, I would like to get a reasonable estimate of how long an oral is going to last in advance. I hate seeing an airplane sit on the ground because of a pending check. It's unfair to the FBO and it's unfair to the other renters.
 
Ajax said:
A friend of mine had a CFI oral that was 17 hours long, over the course of two days, AND he passed.
Click to expand...

HAY-SUES! That's a hell of an oral! What they hell was he asking the guy? I would have discontinued the damn thing, and canceled the check!
 
My last ride:

DPE Looks at watch.

DPE: "Well its been about an hour, oh, CFIT, yeah don't hit the ground, go ahead and get the plane ready."
 
rframe said:
I'm not sure if this is a local phenomena, but we've had some DPE's who have been conducting some really long PPL check rides.
Click to expand...

That's total BS, you need to talk to the DPEs and if they don't change, then you need to find other DPEs even if you have to travel for the checkride.

There is absolutely no reason that a PPL checkride should be longer than 2 hours. Even for a CFI, the max should be 4 hours.

If a student endures a marathon oral exam, then I recommend asking for a letter of discontinuance. After being grilled all day, I am not in any condition to drive home, much less fly an airplane.
 
As a DPE, my time is valuable. If a guy hasn't been able to convince me in less than 2 hrs that he knows his $#!7 and I should be comfortable flying with him/her (ppl, ir and cpl) then I give him a salmon colored slip and move on. Period...
 
My private check ride oral was 6 hours long. 1.4 on the flight. Guy gave me the a/c about 10 kts past Vne with the friction lock so tight I had to use both hands to get it loose. Asked me to show him our position on the sectional about 300 agl in the climb after takeoff.

To say he was an idiot would be redundant.
 
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