Failure Modes of Flight Test

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jiangrm
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Failure Modes of Flight Test

Post by jiangrm »

After a failed PPL test and a successful partial retest, I finally made it.

Having spent days in retrospective, I realized there could have been better ways of doing it. In short, flight test is a game of avoiding errors, rather than being perfect or better. The focus of test preparation or the flight training should be avoiding "1" and "2". These errors can be enumerated.

However, there seems to be gaps among criteria in Flight Test Guide (or maybe the way it describes them), instructors' practice, and examiners' expectations, or even from one examiner's to another's. I think it makes sense to put things documented and shared, for the benefit of myself, as well as other peer pilots.

Thus this document: Failure Modes of Flight Test.

If you are a pilot examiner, instructor, or pilot that would like to comment or contribute your experience to this document, please click this link to request access: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aWH ... sp=sharing

If you only want to review it, please click here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2P ... 4NqCBj/pub
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crpilot
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Re: Failure Modes of Flight Test

Post by crpilot »

It might be useful for you to take a look at the Pilot Examiner Manual. While it doesn't address the "failure modes" per se, it does lay out with a bit more specificity what is expected for each item on each type of flight test. It also has additional information beyond that found in the flight test guides regarding the 4-point marking scale, errors, and deviations.

https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/public ... n-tp-14277
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fish4life
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Re: Failure Modes of Flight Test

Post by fish4life »

The point of flight training shouldn’t be to teach you how to pass the flight test.
The point of flight training should be to teach you to be a safe and competent pilot which should have you be able to avoid 1 and 2’s that way. There is some things you need to be taught in a specific flight test way like a diversion (which you will never use in real life) though
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Big Pistons Forever
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Re: Failure Modes of Flight Test

Post by Big Pistons Forever »

fish4life wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:24 am The point of flight training shouldn’t be to teach you how to pass the flight test.
The point of flight training should be to teach you to be a safe and competent pilot which should have you be able to avoid 1 and 2’s that way. There is some things you need to be taught in a specific flight test way like a diversion (which you will never use in real life) though
/\ What he said

In any case the TC Flight Test Guide describes in very specific detail what you will be tested on. Pilot Examiners have to follow the FTG and you won’t see anything that is not in it. I am still surprised to see flight test candidates that were not familiar with the FTG.
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