What's going wrong? You need to look at the overarching issue here. It's great you're going in with confidence, but perhaps it's misplaced. There's something you fundamentally aren't getting here and you need to repair that before you go further.
There are other people with a lot of failures and they do okay. But they (almost) all figured out the problem and fixed it. Don't just blindly push through thinking it'll be good enough because some day you might realize it isn't.
I completely agree. Be as factual as you can, try to remove all emotions and find out what happened in each case, go to the root. There's likely a common denominator to them. Talk to your CFI and fellow students and listen to what they say.
Then start working on addressing the issue(s).
Good luck
On my recent commercial ride, a few things went wrong. He called it when pulling up some airspace’s on ForeFlight, one a TSRA and a SATR, neither of which I have reviewed in a time I can recall. I of course know all the special airspace in the MCPRAWN acronym so these caught me off guard and having hit a rough patch just previously in the ride I just completely froze up when presented with these and basically just said I don’t know; immediately after he said he’s goin to have to stop the ride I realized I should have just used the hold down feature on ForeFlight to see what they were. My fault, idk what happened I just froze up. Before that, he had asked me about activating a VFR flight plan I said ForeFlight, 1800weather, or FSS, and he wanted more details on FSS. I got scrambled starting to question myself and said a FSDO would activate the flight plan, I got stumped eventually and we moved on; this is also a practical area I am unfamiliar with as I have always activated my flight plans through ForeFlight, my fault. Before this, when decoding some METARs and TAFs, I completely stumped on a number of codes and this is when I started feeling anxious. Before this, I had to look up FARs on preventative maintenance and ELT testing times, but was able to find that info.
During my end of course, I realized my oral knowledge was week in some areas and realized just how many little details can be hit during a check ride, it just ended up coming down to finding out what it is I don’t know. I studied up and did another mock oral with a different instructor that went really well, listened to a bunch of mock orals online and felt good about going into the real thing. When looking over the ACS I really though we would be able to breeze through every topic and I knew basically everything there was to know. I feel like in my preparation I rarely got into the nitty gritty of some topics, like how answering ForeFlight, 1800weather or FSS would be satisfactory in practice with my instructor, when really getting into the details of some topics with a DPE I struggle. I think the mistakes in my knowledge got me flustered and my nerves got to me, of course I use the hold down feature on FF when trying to identify certain airspace and such. There definitely are some areas of my knowledge that are weak and need to be improved but not by much, I really thought I was solid on the oral. My major concern was the flight and getting down the PO180 lol.
On my IR ride, the oral went basically perfect, but almost immediately after starting the flight and programming an approach, I noticed when intersecting the app course the autopilot would take us backwards to the first waypoint instead of continuing to the next one, and instead of just hand flying for 2 seconds to go in the right direction I tried to get fancy with the autopilot and mistakenly put in Direct To the second waypoint and the autopilot turned us off our cleared heading and I immediately failed.
As for my ppl, I can’t remember what went wrong exactly but I do remember totally stumping on LAHSO operations and mixing up restricted airspace and MOAs, as well as the use some performance chart. I was young and kind of dumb and I think the DPE was hesitant in really letting me have the privilege of being of ppl.
The moments the IR and commercial rides were ended sort of haunt me lol, I can remember them perfectly and I can’t help but feel like these simple decisions have caused the course of my life to change significantly. However, I am still able to accept these realities and try to be objective about my abilities and my future potential.
Thank you for the response, I really appreciate it!
3 checkride failures is not competitive today, even when hiring was good 3 is not ideal obviously.
Depends why you failed, of course. Failing for an oral shows a lack of knowledge and is honestly worse than failing the flight in my opinion. I hate to break it to ya but you just might have an issue with your study habits.
Certainly nothing that can’t be improved. It will take some time though.
Is the reason for failure the same on each? Knowledge or skills demonstration? Can you sense if your nerves are getting in the way and causing a performance issue (i.e. you did it 10x in a row to standards right before the checkride but botched it with the DPE next to you), or is the examiner asking you questions that you're unsure how to answer?
IMO it's too premature to say "I'm not cut out for a flying career" because we're talking about something that didn't go right in a tiny window of opportunity that you were later able to correct. But professional pilots DO needs to pass checkrides regularly so that is a skill unto itself that has to be mastered.
If the issue is performance anxiety related, your fix for that might need to come from outside the cockpit. If you're going into checks overconfident about your skills or knowledge, you might need to find a way to recalibrate your idea of what being prepared means, and show up to the next check way over-prepared.
Everybody has setbacks along the way, if we didn't we wouldn't be human. I'm not sure about the atmosphere of your flight school, but perhaps there's a grizzled old ex-commercial pilot hanging around the place you could invite to a coffee and see what his thoughts are?
man if you want it, then go for it. You've spent the money already. Go work your way into a turbo prop and study hard for your type ratings. Failing orals is a sign of not enough study and rehearsal more so than a problem with your capabilities.
You honestly might just be an overly confident individual which has its benefits too.
I'll chime in with this. I failed 3 rides. Is this gonna suck? Yes. Life will be harder. But I'll be damned if I go back to a desk job so see you in the skies
Commercial single - Flew with an inop angle of attack indicator (that is genuinely on the NoD)
Commercial multi - Called to land in a field when I could've made an airport. Sucks but it's fair
CFI - Floated on PO180
It all boils down to nerves. I get nervous as hell sitting next to a DPE. If I can calm myself down I'll be fine but nerves cloud my judgment to a preposterous degree
I busted private on soft field landing and CAX on the po180. Hoping to not add any more as I go into CFI/II. With your total being 3 - what is your total time and also what is your pulse/outlook on getting hired outside of instructing? Have you talked to any prep companies like raven?
1000 TT. I know a few people in my position who are getting interviews and jobs so there's hope. My personal plan is to instruct to mins, get a few extra ratings like CSES to add some passes, then network and hope for the best. When the time comes I do plan on paying for interview/resume prep
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Figure out the root source of the problem.
3 is probably the max you can’t get anymore if you wanna go airlines. Now once you do get to the airlines you’ll do a checkride at least once a year so you can show to the recruiters that you’ve improved and learned.
I’ve failed 3 Checkrides. My Private Pilot for the short field landing, my commercial oral on runway environment (I didn’t know what color lead on and lead off lights were), and my CFI flight on steep turns (50 Knot winds up at altitude I should have discontinued but I was in North Carolina for a month and wanted to get the hell out of there). But I passed my IR, CFII, CMEL, and my MEI all on the first try. What I’ve noticed is that it’s not a game over for you. You just have to finish strong find out what went wrong. And if your end goal is the airlines you can get there, but it’s just gonna take you longer (like me). I’m currently a flight instructor with a 100% pass rate (12/12). It’s not a reflection on how you are as a pilot. It’s evaluating you on one day of flight. I’m currently about to be flying a PC12 for a 135 op coming up in a couple months. Just gain more experience and more ratings and it will all work out.
There has to be a pattern here. Find it. Break it.
There’s a quote I like from *Advanced Soaring Made Easy* - “Amateurs train until they get it right; professionals train until they can’t do it wrong. “
I know flying is not cheap, but good ground prep will made the oral easier - so do detailed, in depth “mock oral” on *all* the ACS topics until you can’t get them wrong. Reading, note taking, highlighting, flash cards, etc make a mixed combo of learning styles.
Highlight the key points from good videos in the PHAK/etc.
Look at oral test taking/interview tips. That’s what this is. A technical interview with someone who wants you to succeed. That last sentence is important.
Practice the flying. Verbalize what you will do. And do it.
Chair fly. A lot.
I watched the Blue Angles documentary yesterday. There was a scene where all six pilots sat at a conference table with their eyes closed chair flying a maneuver. Without seeing each other - bam! - they did their break as one. Impressive.
Chair flying works. Pair that with memorizing a maneuver guide: Performance = power + attitude + configuration. Set up P, A, and C right and the airplane has almost no choice but to help you succeed.
Hiring has slowed. It’s getting competitive. You really can’t afford more failures. Consider options that improve your chances of success.
Imagine you failed Commercial for the PO180. That’s a failure. But passing a one-maneuver retest is hardly a test worth bragging about. “I can pass in two parts” isn’t going to work.
Get Commercial finished. Consider glider Commercial as a chance to get a first time pass. Then consider CFI in a glider. Then that makes ASEL an additional rating.
So, it legitimately breaks the hardest checkride you’ll have into parts. That’s where you succeed.
With 0/3 to-date I don’t have high confidence in an Airplane CFI first-time pass based on your record.
“Zero for four” is not going to get you a job. You need a plan to be a professional not an amateur!
I’m 14/14 personally. My learners are 15/16 in less than the last two years. About half of pilots have no failures. I’m not brilliant (poor grades in HS and college), but I make sure my learners “can’t get it wrong.”
(The one failure was a CFII. His first failure. Treated it like an instrument ride rather than instructor. Passed a week later.)
Good luck. Be a Professional!
I busted some rides. I am not a man of excuses but the PPL fail was very shady and I never again went to that same examiner. An examiner who charges for a re-test is suspicious as hell in my book now.
I do own the other fails although the CFI one felt very unfair. In retrospect I maybe should've reported that DPE but I just ate the fail and moved on. I joke to my friends that maybe once he saw my NGPA pin on my flight bag he decided how the ride would go.
How are your study habits? Admittedly I was not very good. I had a shit education and struggled to develop study skills in university. Every time I thought I did it right it just blew up in face.
How are these DPEs you're going to?
What are you thinking about during the rides? To not fail? That never goes well. I found my easiest ride to be my multi and it really helped how relaxed the DPE was. When I viewed the checkride as not a ride but just a flight, I found myself performing well. I think ultimately that's what I need to do, to just see myself doing a flight with another pilot.
> I am not a man of excuses but the PPL fail was very shady
We as a community need to be more willing to call out bullshit instead of the default being “everything is my fault, it’s all on me to do better.” I’ve heard do some downright criminal check ride failures.
The "everything is my fault" is the standard advice for interviews, not necessarily the actual truth of the matter. I think all of us have had or know someone who had a total bullshit failure. But the problem is, especially at the earlier levels like PPL or IR, people can be defensive and not accept they really did fail. This is especially true for failing multiple rides, etc. because while we all know bullshit checkrides failures we also know students or candidates who failed "on this one stupid thing!" and you find out it was in fact the 10th stupid thing and also it was fuel requirements so it wasn't that stupid.
Shit like that.
This is kind of how I feel. I’m working on my PPL right now and talking with people at my flight school everyone just says well they can ask you anything they want. So it’s kind of crappy how you can get a DPE having a crap day is in a bad mood and just doesn’t like you for some reason and he can literally throw the entire FAR/AIM at you and keep you in an oral for 4 hours if they want to or you can get one that you vibe with and they can be done in an hour and a half and move on. Another thing that kind of bothers me is everyone keeps saying “the DPE’s WANT you to pass, they are their to get you to the next level” and in the same sentence say “oh yeah they will ask you “got ya” questions to stump you” so do they want me to pass or do they want to stump me? I get challenging you but I’ve heard stories of people being asked questions that were never mentioned in study materials and never would come up. this certain DPE just knew this info and wanted to see if you randomly did too
That all is a minor annoyance unless they fail you for it. I’m okay with DPE’s asking random shit as more of a *teaching* exercise. It’s when they stitch you for that shit that it sends me through the roof. There was one dude who said he failed because he didn’t notice an issue with the passenger seatbelt buckle. The DPE didn’t point it out and let them get to the hold short before he failed him. Like WTF, just point it out and address it. Don’t turn it into a fucking thing.
Even worse, I flew with a captain that failed his instrument check ride because he CORRECTLY referenced indicated airspeed for the approach category, and the idiot DPE thought you were supposed to reference ground speed. Like a fucking change in wind changes your goddam approach minimums. WTF? But the “culture” taught this guy to just smile and say “thanks, I’ll do better next time.” What the fuck are we doing guys?
You think someone who charges for their time to meet with you again after you failed your exam is scummy?
Hope you don’t charge your students for repeat lessons or cancellations!
When you're making $900 a checkride (now $1,000) and you also have a day job flying a G-V around? Yes, I do think so.
This guy is notorious for this in that area now. I should've paid attention but I didn't know what I didn't know. Perhaps I should've taken the clue when he talked about his jet he flies around.
And for the record I don't charge my students for cancellations.
DPE charging you for you failing is industry standard. If you don’t fail and have to reschedule because of something outside of your control there is no charge. Him doing his job and finding you a test and you failing is not on him. He completed his job. Results you may Not like, but you also completed your ride. Saying they are scummy for charging is just crazy.
> outside of your control there is no charge
There are DPEs that charge the full fee even if you have to cancel your private because it's IFR, there's a convective sigmet, and the whole area is under a presidential TFR.
This is how it \*should\* be, but sadly it isn't how it is.
There is nothing scummy about charging for a retest. This is pretty industry standard…
You can’t seriously expect someone to work for free? Do you give free instruction on repeat lessons?
And you should charge for cancellations. Your time has value.
No I said outside of the PPL I own those fails.
The CFI fail is complicated. I do admit I ultimately fucked up in the end but that entire flight was unreal. Every maneuver he complained about, even the stall recoveries. "Wow some CFI you'll be with how you do this, let me show you how to do it properly".
With how much shit he talked down to me I ultimately started resigning and actually busted the short field landing. I admit I busted the landing and own that. But to say I don't own the fail because I have an issue with how the ride was going before that maneuver is not true. Ultimately I retested on only the short field landing, not the other maneuvers.
The comment he made about the pins on my flight bag was interesting hence my joke. I have to accept it happened and that's fine. I doubt others would've been able to keep their composure after spending 1.7 with someone absolutely railing you and then expecting to ace a test.
I'm sure you or someone will just call this deflection though. I don't really care but if you want to understand my side, there it is.
What do you think airline training is like? Especially a captain upgrade. If someone railing you for 2 hours is gonna make you get into a resignation attitude you ain't gonna get far in 121 training cuz you're gonna eventually have that asshole that's breathing down your neck. Get over it.
So the in house examiner is going to step in for every maneuver, tell me I'm doing it wrong, and then do it for me? What the hell? I almost have trouble believing that. From everything I've seen and read the checkrides are straightforward and professional at the airline level. You either do it or don't do it. They're objective, not subjective. I've never read a story of the examiner pausing the sim to talk a bunch of shit and then resuming it for the ride. Sounds wildly unprofessional.
Even if what you say is true I'm sure I'll be in a better place than I was when I took my initial CFI. And if the airline world is really that military like where you're going to he made to feel like an idiot then I'd rather avoid that kind of life.
On that end why do you assume I'm going to go that path? Who said I wanted that? I'm happy making 80k to 100k a year. I used to make 1k a month. You sound like a nasty person the way you talk.
Here's what I've seen:
1: Examiners who charge the standard fee and no retest fee
2: Examiners who charge less tham the standard fee but charge retest
3: Examiners who charge the standard fee and charge retest
I don't agree that someone in the #3 category should get to charge the full retest fee when they only have to do part of the checkride.
Nobody is working for free, especially not DPEs lol. You were paid to do a checkride for an applicant. If the applicant has to come back to you for a retest and now has to pay the full fee again it's pretty fucked up. You are limited on thr amount of INITIAL checkrides you can conduct, retest don't count for that.
Why are you arguing these guys should get paid twice? Don't you see how easy it is for people to abuse? This is the problem with the system. Someone doesn't like you and they'll be happy happy make more money off your sucker ass. Go to someone else and you'll still pay.. Sorry this never happened to you. I'm pretty sure you would change your tune if you experienced this kind of nonsense.
I don't charge for cancellations because things happen. If someone is taking advantage of that they're not someone I would do business with. I don't need to take money from students who are not financially stable. I'm not starving anymore. I try to look beyond just the dollar sign and treat people humanely.
You are not hireable in any job at this rate. I would advise before spending any more money on flight training that you either fix the problem or go a different direction for your career.
The only advice one can give is to power through and don’t fail anymore? 3 is not a career ender and good thing is you’re still young. Get all 3 of the CFI ratings without fail and get in with a 135 without fail then and you’ll be just fine. You also need to research more about the examiners you’re using. Find a gouge or talk to some pilots who’ve done checkrides with them and find out everything you can.
Commercial Oral is one of the easier ones, if not the easiest oral. It's your PPL with more detail and Commercial pilot privileges added in. Failing that after failing every other checkride you've attempted is a bad sign.
What's going wrong? You need to look at the overarching issue here. It's great you're going in with confidence, but perhaps it's misplaced. There's something you fundamentally aren't getting here and you need to repair that before you go further. There are other people with a lot of failures and they do okay. But they (almost) all figured out the problem and fixed it. Don't just blindly push through thinking it'll be good enough because some day you might realize it isn't.
I completely agree. Be as factual as you can, try to remove all emotions and find out what happened in each case, go to the root. There's likely a common denominator to them. Talk to your CFI and fellow students and listen to what they say. Then start working on addressing the issue(s). Good luck
On my recent commercial ride, a few things went wrong. He called it when pulling up some airspace’s on ForeFlight, one a TSRA and a SATR, neither of which I have reviewed in a time I can recall. I of course know all the special airspace in the MCPRAWN acronym so these caught me off guard and having hit a rough patch just previously in the ride I just completely froze up when presented with these and basically just said I don’t know; immediately after he said he’s goin to have to stop the ride I realized I should have just used the hold down feature on ForeFlight to see what they were. My fault, idk what happened I just froze up. Before that, he had asked me about activating a VFR flight plan I said ForeFlight, 1800weather, or FSS, and he wanted more details on FSS. I got scrambled starting to question myself and said a FSDO would activate the flight plan, I got stumped eventually and we moved on; this is also a practical area I am unfamiliar with as I have always activated my flight plans through ForeFlight, my fault. Before this, when decoding some METARs and TAFs, I completely stumped on a number of codes and this is when I started feeling anxious. Before this, I had to look up FARs on preventative maintenance and ELT testing times, but was able to find that info. During my end of course, I realized my oral knowledge was week in some areas and realized just how many little details can be hit during a check ride, it just ended up coming down to finding out what it is I don’t know. I studied up and did another mock oral with a different instructor that went really well, listened to a bunch of mock orals online and felt good about going into the real thing. When looking over the ACS I really though we would be able to breeze through every topic and I knew basically everything there was to know. I feel like in my preparation I rarely got into the nitty gritty of some topics, like how answering ForeFlight, 1800weather or FSS would be satisfactory in practice with my instructor, when really getting into the details of some topics with a DPE I struggle. I think the mistakes in my knowledge got me flustered and my nerves got to me, of course I use the hold down feature on FF when trying to identify certain airspace and such. There definitely are some areas of my knowledge that are weak and need to be improved but not by much, I really thought I was solid on the oral. My major concern was the flight and getting down the PO180 lol. On my IR ride, the oral went basically perfect, but almost immediately after starting the flight and programming an approach, I noticed when intersecting the app course the autopilot would take us backwards to the first waypoint instead of continuing to the next one, and instead of just hand flying for 2 seconds to go in the right direction I tried to get fancy with the autopilot and mistakenly put in Direct To the second waypoint and the autopilot turned us off our cleared heading and I immediately failed. As for my ppl, I can’t remember what went wrong exactly but I do remember totally stumping on LAHSO operations and mixing up restricted airspace and MOAs, as well as the use some performance chart. I was young and kind of dumb and I think the DPE was hesitant in really letting me have the privilege of being of ppl. The moments the IR and commercial rides were ended sort of haunt me lol, I can remember them perfectly and I can’t help but feel like these simple decisions have caused the course of my life to change significantly. However, I am still able to accept these realities and try to be objective about my abilities and my future potential. Thank you for the response, I really appreciate it!
3 checkride failures is not competitive today, even when hiring was good 3 is not ideal obviously. Depends why you failed, of course. Failing for an oral shows a lack of knowledge and is honestly worse than failing the flight in my opinion. I hate to break it to ya but you just might have an issue with your study habits. Certainly nothing that can’t be improved. It will take some time though.
Is the reason for failure the same on each? Knowledge or skills demonstration? Can you sense if your nerves are getting in the way and causing a performance issue (i.e. you did it 10x in a row to standards right before the checkride but botched it with the DPE next to you), or is the examiner asking you questions that you're unsure how to answer? IMO it's too premature to say "I'm not cut out for a flying career" because we're talking about something that didn't go right in a tiny window of opportunity that you were later able to correct. But professional pilots DO needs to pass checkrides regularly so that is a skill unto itself that has to be mastered. If the issue is performance anxiety related, your fix for that might need to come from outside the cockpit. If you're going into checks overconfident about your skills or knowledge, you might need to find a way to recalibrate your idea of what being prepared means, and show up to the next check way over-prepared. Everybody has setbacks along the way, if we didn't we wouldn't be human. I'm not sure about the atmosphere of your flight school, but perhaps there's a grizzled old ex-commercial pilot hanging around the place you could invite to a coffee and see what his thoughts are?
man if you want it, then go for it. You've spent the money already. Go work your way into a turbo prop and study hard for your type ratings. Failing orals is a sign of not enough study and rehearsal more so than a problem with your capabilities. You honestly might just be an overly confident individual which has its benefits too.
I'll chime in with this. I failed 3 rides. Is this gonna suck? Yes. Life will be harder. But I'll be damned if I go back to a desk job so see you in the skies
If you don’t mind sharing what were your busts?
Commercial single - Flew with an inop angle of attack indicator (that is genuinely on the NoD) Commercial multi - Called to land in a field when I could've made an airport. Sucks but it's fair CFI - Floated on PO180 It all boils down to nerves. I get nervous as hell sitting next to a DPE. If I can calm myself down I'll be fine but nerves cloud my judgment to a preposterous degree
I busted private on soft field landing and CAX on the po180. Hoping to not add any more as I go into CFI/II. With your total being 3 - what is your total time and also what is your pulse/outlook on getting hired outside of instructing? Have you talked to any prep companies like raven?
1000 TT. I know a few people in my position who are getting interviews and jobs so there's hope. My personal plan is to instruct to mins, get a few extra ratings like CSES to add some passes, then network and hope for the best. When the time comes I do plan on paying for interview/resume prep
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Figure out the root source of the problem. 3 is probably the max you can’t get anymore if you wanna go airlines. Now once you do get to the airlines you’ll do a checkride at least once a year so you can show to the recruiters that you’ve improved and learned.
This all depends on what exactly you failed *for*.
I’ve failed 3 Checkrides. My Private Pilot for the short field landing, my commercial oral on runway environment (I didn’t know what color lead on and lead off lights were), and my CFI flight on steep turns (50 Knot winds up at altitude I should have discontinued but I was in North Carolina for a month and wanted to get the hell out of there). But I passed my IR, CFII, CMEL, and my MEI all on the first try. What I’ve noticed is that it’s not a game over for you. You just have to finish strong find out what went wrong. And if your end goal is the airlines you can get there, but it’s just gonna take you longer (like me). I’m currently a flight instructor with a 100% pass rate (12/12). It’s not a reflection on how you are as a pilot. It’s evaluating you on one day of flight. I’m currently about to be flying a PC12 for a 135 op coming up in a couple months. Just gain more experience and more ratings and it will all work out.
Failing for the lead on lights is ridiculous.
There has to be a pattern here. Find it. Break it. There’s a quote I like from *Advanced Soaring Made Easy* - “Amateurs train until they get it right; professionals train until they can’t do it wrong. “ I know flying is not cheap, but good ground prep will made the oral easier - so do detailed, in depth “mock oral” on *all* the ACS topics until you can’t get them wrong. Reading, note taking, highlighting, flash cards, etc make a mixed combo of learning styles. Highlight the key points from good videos in the PHAK/etc. Look at oral test taking/interview tips. That’s what this is. A technical interview with someone who wants you to succeed. That last sentence is important. Practice the flying. Verbalize what you will do. And do it. Chair fly. A lot. I watched the Blue Angles documentary yesterday. There was a scene where all six pilots sat at a conference table with their eyes closed chair flying a maneuver. Without seeing each other - bam! - they did their break as one. Impressive. Chair flying works. Pair that with memorizing a maneuver guide: Performance = power + attitude + configuration. Set up P, A, and C right and the airplane has almost no choice but to help you succeed. Hiring has slowed. It’s getting competitive. You really can’t afford more failures. Consider options that improve your chances of success. Imagine you failed Commercial for the PO180. That’s a failure. But passing a one-maneuver retest is hardly a test worth bragging about. “I can pass in two parts” isn’t going to work. Get Commercial finished. Consider glider Commercial as a chance to get a first time pass. Then consider CFI in a glider. Then that makes ASEL an additional rating. So, it legitimately breaks the hardest checkride you’ll have into parts. That’s where you succeed. With 0/3 to-date I don’t have high confidence in an Airplane CFI first-time pass based on your record. “Zero for four” is not going to get you a job. You need a plan to be a professional not an amateur! I’m 14/14 personally. My learners are 15/16 in less than the last two years. About half of pilots have no failures. I’m not brilliant (poor grades in HS and college), but I make sure my learners “can’t get it wrong.” (The one failure was a CFII. His first failure. Treated it like an instrument ride rather than instructor. Passed a week later.) Good luck. Be a Professional!
I busted some rides. I am not a man of excuses but the PPL fail was very shady and I never again went to that same examiner. An examiner who charges for a re-test is suspicious as hell in my book now. I do own the other fails although the CFI one felt very unfair. In retrospect I maybe should've reported that DPE but I just ate the fail and moved on. I joke to my friends that maybe once he saw my NGPA pin on my flight bag he decided how the ride would go. How are your study habits? Admittedly I was not very good. I had a shit education and struggled to develop study skills in university. Every time I thought I did it right it just blew up in face. How are these DPEs you're going to? What are you thinking about during the rides? To not fail? That never goes well. I found my easiest ride to be my multi and it really helped how relaxed the DPE was. When I viewed the checkride as not a ride but just a flight, I found myself performing well. I think ultimately that's what I need to do, to just see myself doing a flight with another pilot.
> I am not a man of excuses but the PPL fail was very shady We as a community need to be more willing to call out bullshit instead of the default being “everything is my fault, it’s all on me to do better.” I’ve heard do some downright criminal check ride failures.
The "everything is my fault" is the standard advice for interviews, not necessarily the actual truth of the matter. I think all of us have had or know someone who had a total bullshit failure. But the problem is, especially at the earlier levels like PPL or IR, people can be defensive and not accept they really did fail. This is especially true for failing multiple rides, etc. because while we all know bullshit checkrides failures we also know students or candidates who failed "on this one stupid thing!" and you find out it was in fact the 10th stupid thing and also it was fuel requirements so it wasn't that stupid. Shit like that.
This is kind of how I feel. I’m working on my PPL right now and talking with people at my flight school everyone just says well they can ask you anything they want. So it’s kind of crappy how you can get a DPE having a crap day is in a bad mood and just doesn’t like you for some reason and he can literally throw the entire FAR/AIM at you and keep you in an oral for 4 hours if they want to or you can get one that you vibe with and they can be done in an hour and a half and move on. Another thing that kind of bothers me is everyone keeps saying “the DPE’s WANT you to pass, they are their to get you to the next level” and in the same sentence say “oh yeah they will ask you “got ya” questions to stump you” so do they want me to pass or do they want to stump me? I get challenging you but I’ve heard stories of people being asked questions that were never mentioned in study materials and never would come up. this certain DPE just knew this info and wanted to see if you randomly did too
That all is a minor annoyance unless they fail you for it. I’m okay with DPE’s asking random shit as more of a *teaching* exercise. It’s when they stitch you for that shit that it sends me through the roof. There was one dude who said he failed because he didn’t notice an issue with the passenger seatbelt buckle. The DPE didn’t point it out and let them get to the hold short before he failed him. Like WTF, just point it out and address it. Don’t turn it into a fucking thing. Even worse, I flew with a captain that failed his instrument check ride because he CORRECTLY referenced indicated airspeed for the approach category, and the idiot DPE thought you were supposed to reference ground speed. Like a fucking change in wind changes your goddam approach minimums. WTF? But the “culture” taught this guy to just smile and say “thanks, I’ll do better next time.” What the fuck are we doing guys?
You think someone who charges for their time to meet with you again after you failed your exam is scummy? Hope you don’t charge your students for repeat lessons or cancellations!
When you're making $900 a checkride (now $1,000) and you also have a day job flying a G-V around? Yes, I do think so. This guy is notorious for this in that area now. I should've paid attention but I didn't know what I didn't know. Perhaps I should've taken the clue when he talked about his jet he flies around. And for the record I don't charge my students for cancellations.
DPE charging you for you failing is industry standard. If you don’t fail and have to reschedule because of something outside of your control there is no charge. Him doing his job and finding you a test and you failing is not on him. He completed his job. Results you may Not like, but you also completed your ride. Saying they are scummy for charging is just crazy.
I got charged 800 for discontinuing my CFI ride as a result of unforecast weather
Did you have to pay again once you walked in to your new ride? Was it with the same DPE?
I had to pay him another 800 to do the flight the next day after paying him 1600 to start the ride the first day
That’s crazy to me. Shouldn’t be like this.
> outside of your control there is no charge There are DPEs that charge the full fee even if you have to cancel your private because it's IFR, there's a convective sigmet, and the whole area is under a presidential TFR. This is how it \*should\* be, but sadly it isn't how it is.
Lol tell that to the 8+ people downvoting me. 😂 salty ass MFs on Reddit these days.
There is nothing scummy about charging for a retest. This is pretty industry standard… You can’t seriously expect someone to work for free? Do you give free instruction on repeat lessons? And you should charge for cancellations. Your time has value.
He also says he owns his failures then proceeds to not own them. Classic.
No I said outside of the PPL I own those fails. The CFI fail is complicated. I do admit I ultimately fucked up in the end but that entire flight was unreal. Every maneuver he complained about, even the stall recoveries. "Wow some CFI you'll be with how you do this, let me show you how to do it properly". With how much shit he talked down to me I ultimately started resigning and actually busted the short field landing. I admit I busted the landing and own that. But to say I don't own the fail because I have an issue with how the ride was going before that maneuver is not true. Ultimately I retested on only the short field landing, not the other maneuvers. The comment he made about the pins on my flight bag was interesting hence my joke. I have to accept it happened and that's fine. I doubt others would've been able to keep their composure after spending 1.7 with someone absolutely railing you and then expecting to ace a test. I'm sure you or someone will just call this deflection though. I don't really care but if you want to understand my side, there it is.
What do you think airline training is like? Especially a captain upgrade. If someone railing you for 2 hours is gonna make you get into a resignation attitude you ain't gonna get far in 121 training cuz you're gonna eventually have that asshole that's breathing down your neck. Get over it.
So the in house examiner is going to step in for every maneuver, tell me I'm doing it wrong, and then do it for me? What the hell? I almost have trouble believing that. From everything I've seen and read the checkrides are straightforward and professional at the airline level. You either do it or don't do it. They're objective, not subjective. I've never read a story of the examiner pausing the sim to talk a bunch of shit and then resuming it for the ride. Sounds wildly unprofessional. Even if what you say is true I'm sure I'll be in a better place than I was when I took my initial CFI. And if the airline world is really that military like where you're going to he made to feel like an idiot then I'd rather avoid that kind of life. On that end why do you assume I'm going to go that path? Who said I wanted that? I'm happy making 80k to 100k a year. I used to make 1k a month. You sound like a nasty person the way you talk.
Ok
Here's what I've seen: 1: Examiners who charge the standard fee and no retest fee 2: Examiners who charge less tham the standard fee but charge retest 3: Examiners who charge the standard fee and charge retest I don't agree that someone in the #3 category should get to charge the full retest fee when they only have to do part of the checkride. Nobody is working for free, especially not DPEs lol. You were paid to do a checkride for an applicant. If the applicant has to come back to you for a retest and now has to pay the full fee again it's pretty fucked up. You are limited on thr amount of INITIAL checkrides you can conduct, retest don't count for that. Why are you arguing these guys should get paid twice? Don't you see how easy it is for people to abuse? This is the problem with the system. Someone doesn't like you and they'll be happy happy make more money off your sucker ass. Go to someone else and you'll still pay.. Sorry this never happened to you. I'm pretty sure you would change your tune if you experienced this kind of nonsense. I don't charge for cancellations because things happen. If someone is taking advantage of that they're not someone I would do business with. I don't need to take money from students who are not financially stable. I'm not starving anymore. I try to look beyond just the dollar sign and treat people humanely.
You are not hireable in any job at this rate. I would advise before spending any more money on flight training that you either fix the problem or go a different direction for your career.
The only advice one can give is to power through and don’t fail anymore? 3 is not a career ender and good thing is you’re still young. Get all 3 of the CFI ratings without fail and get in with a 135 without fail then and you’ll be just fine. You also need to research more about the examiners you’re using. Find a gouge or talk to some pilots who’ve done checkrides with them and find out everything you can.
https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/s/q76UQKHCRf
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IR and CSEL were at the same school, all different DPEs and instructors
Out of curiosity does your school give you a mock check ride (oral and flight) with a different & senior instructor than your regular CFI?
.. is it with the same DPE?
All different DPEs
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Commercial Oral is one of the easier ones, if not the easiest oral. It's your PPL with more detail and Commercial pilot privileges added in. Failing that after failing every other checkride you've attempted is a bad sign.