I just finished my annual recurrency. The "pre-ride" ( i guess you would call it) went great, and I was on my game but the ride itself went so so. I can attribute much of my performance to fatigue ( I'm currently working 3 jobs at about 100 hours a week so sleep is a commodity ). There also the fact that always flying in controlled airspace has it's draw backs as the % of vectors in a day is quite high but my question is: you never really hear of those who failed rides I mean is it that rare? I heard somewhere;" There are 2 kinds of pilots in this world, those who have failed rides, and those who will fail rides" is there truth in that?
Despite the turn out of my inquiry, I find that under the circumstances, I did a good job and of course will be off to the sim on my own behalf to really sharpen those skills. I don't want to have to think too hard about flying .
I found my first ever captain ride to be the hardest and busiest ride i've done thus far...It didnt go as planned either...But it gives me time as previously said to sharpen the skills that I lacked during the time. Thank god for the sim!
I have seen a guy fail a ride for no other reason than the examiner had a chip on his shoulder. By the same token, i have seen guys pass rides for no other reason than the examiner was too nice to fail them.
And just like gear wrong landings, "Them that have and them that will" is far more often quoted by them that have than them that will.
A checkride should be like a ladies skirt. Long enough to cover the basics but short enough to be interesting. I am a Company Check Pilot cat. A so I do lots of rides, all for our company. I am interested in ahrain's comments because that is the very thing that the Approved Check Pilot's mandate is supposed to cover. There will always be controversy anytime someone is asked to express an opinion but if the candidate performs to a cetrain standard. he/she is marked as such, good or bad. I try to keep personal feelings out of the checkride. You always have the tribunal to hear your case if you feel you are wronged. Modern thinking is that there should not be any failures. Just that some people will take longer to achieve the minimum standard. Train until you get it right. At least it works for me. I just hope I have the reputation of setting a high standard and everyone has to meet that standard. If I am correct, failures should reflect not on an individual pilots performance but on the performance of the training program. I had a pilot that messed up an engine failure on the missed approach and she then got proper training and susquent checkrides have proven one thing. If an intelegent person is trained properly, they can overcome difficulties. Check out TC's web site and go to manuals. look up the Check Pilots Manual. I tells how we are supposed to grade performances. But also remember that if a company wants to get rid of a pilot, failing a checkride is one quick and dirty way. That is why there are procedures in place to prevent that from happening. But then again,we are not supposed to run out of gas either. I think that is illegal.
The ride in question was actually for an instructor rating which is very subjective. Yes the tribunal is there but it was much easier and quicker to do the re ride with someone else. When Transport comes and parks their 99 on our ramp without even a by your leave we don't send them a bill. These are the same people who will be doing our audit next year. Even cat driver cannot win a pissing contest with the lords of all creation.
As for failing check rides go i totally agree. As professionals we have a responsibility to do something about it if we feel the training is not sufficient to keep us up to standard.
ahramin wrote:And just like gear wrong landings, "Them that have and them that will" is far more often quoted by them that have than them that will.
ahramin
Them that will often say that. Until them that will become them that have.
I don't know if you were ever an instructor, but say that to a student and you'll really make them feel good if they fail. Wait 'til it happens to you - you'll eat the whole shoe store. (No foul intended)
My instructing experience is regrettably limited but i have never had a student fail a ride. However, this may have something to do with having also advised a couple students that they might perhaps be better off taking up golf instead. Like cat driver i do not take people's money if they will not benefit by it. Beyond that, when i am on the bow of a boat in the middle of a race, the worse that is going to happen is that i am going to shred a $10K spinnaker and lose us the race. But in this sport the possible consequences are far worse.
There was a lovely man at our club who was learning to fly. His regular instructor was absent one day and i went flying with him. He was a little shaky and in my opinion should have had far better skills with the amount of experience he had.
Of course my golf speech was never an option as this was not my student and i did not have enough experience with him to even think of recommending that he quit. Not to mention that he obviously needed more confidence, not less, in order to improve his flying. And his instructor was far more experienced than i.
I just tried to teach him as best i could for that flight. His instructor never asked me about the flight and i never thought to offer unsolicited advice to a senior instructor. I never flew with that man again and later on he got his licence. One year later he killed himself in a circuit stall spin accident.
I feel that it is unfortunate that the person you spoke of died, but to say (or at least infer) it was because of his skills is jumping the gun. There could have been many reasons (although I don't know the incident). A ppl is a license to learn. I've lost a friend in an accident due to inexperience, but I know that it didn't necessarily mean he wasn't skilled. Links in the chain. The owner of my company has around 30,000 hrs up north and he still learns new stuff. Most of us will never see that much time, and we're "professionals".
The point I was making is that knowing that the possibility of failing a ride should not be seen as a great embarrasment - that it is a shameful thing to have not met the standards at one point or another. The message I inferred from previous statements seemed to say just those things. I myself have failed a ride, and I tell my students that the possibility is there and that if it happens, don't be discouraged. It can happen to everybody. The fact that somebody you flew with didn't have the apparent skills at that point doesn't mean that they could have had a bad day, or just a shallower learning curve. Not everybody will achieve the standards at the same rate - this is a constant.
The thing is, as an instructor, you can't undermine your efforts by making a statement like that after a student is in the home stretch. Just because you haven't had any of your students fail a ride, that doesn't mean they're the best. When you pass a test, you pass the test. Some of the worst pilots out there have great skills and I wouldn't fly with them for millions.
Maybe I'm going off on a tangent, but that's my honest opinion. No attempt to belittle your last statement intended, ahramin.
P.S. I think that spin training should still be on a PPL ride, and maybe even on an RPP. Experience can be the best teacher.
Actually i think i am the one who is off on a tangent.
While i cannot define it i feel that there is a definite something that is necessary to being a good pilot. Call it the right stuff. An understanding of what the airplane is doing and how to make it do what you want. Situational awareness. More than just a bunch of individual skills there is something that puts it all together into being able to make an aircraft do what you want. In my humble opinion, some people simply do not have what it takes to safely fly. I think almost anyone can fly on a calm, no wind day with a big runway and nothing unexpected. But to be able to take an aircraft in a situation never encountered before that requires positive action is not something that i feel everyone is capable of. Nor is it a matter of knowing your limits and training to expand those limits. A licence is a licence to learn and the main reason for that is that the training never covers it all, or even most of it, and we are contantly running into new situations.
With those two students that i advised to quit, i did not really have a rationale that i could point to and say "This is why". I am open to the possibility that i may be totally wrong in thinking this way. But my experience with these students told me that they just did not understand deep down what was happening, and no amount of theory was going to provide it, and all the training in the world was just going to mask it, until they got into something that the training did not cover.
As an instructor i have very little experience, and i am not certain about this, but i just do not think that flying is something everyone can do, even if they have the intelligence, drive, and perserverance to do it. I hope to someday have something concrete i can point to and say "his skills are fine, his decision making is fine, but X is not". A slow learning curve does not mean a bad pilot, not does a fast learning curve mean a good one, but maybe there is something or some combination of things that overall could mean bad pilot. Maybe not.
As for failing rides, i totally agree that there is nothing shameful about it. Just last week one of my captains and i were discussing someone we knew failing an exam (non flying) and he said it is just like a check ride, sooner or later everyone fails one. I take this to mean that he has failed one. This in no way diminishes his image or qualifications in my eyes, nor i think in the eyes of anyone else. I certainly would not think much of anyone who belittled someone for failing a ride. But i still think that some of us should not be here and that perhaps one of the symptoms is failing rides. But someone could never come close to failing a ride and still not be a safe pilot.
I just don't know.
ahramin
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Last edited by ahramin on Thu Mar 04, 2004 11:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Some people just seem like no matter what you do, they just can't get things. It could be a student/instructor barrier to communication, or bad instructor, bad student, etc. Lot's of things. Or they just might not be able to learn. But I think that for us to make that decision is... difficult. The way I judge a pilot is not how you do. If somebody wants to take 200 hrs to get a PPL well then so be it. If they get it, they get it. If not, oh well. If they want to keep trying - go for it. It's all up to them.
AHHHHHH.... Well your last statement is dead on. I've met lots of guys who have tons of time.... and just ....... suck. Really not good. It seems to me that these bad pilots usually are the guys who think that they're experienced. Passed every ride too, I'll bet. Some of my friends whom I consider to be the best guys have failed. I failed my class 4 ride. Nerves. But I passed second time around, so what's it to me?
I guess everybody should take all experience and advice from the experienced with a grain of salt. (The owner of my company asks why we won't go up and do spin training on a 3 000 ft asl OVC day. It pisses me off when he tells me how I should go about my instruction, when he doesn't even have an Instructor rating. I don't mind advice - hell, I'll ask for it all the time - but I prefer from people who know something about what I'm doing. Well that's a tangent if I've ever heard of one... Venting now....)
I think we're on the same page now.
P.S. How many hrs did you get instructing? If you don't mind.
snagmaster-e and ahramin are talking about private low timers failing a checkride and maybe a failure can be a constructive point but I am talking about high time professional pilots on a PPC/IFT. that have failed. In my opinion, if you are going to fail someone, something has to be gained. Case in point, a pilot is doing a recurrent in a Metro. This experienced pilot turns the wrong way in a hold. He knew better but he had a brain fart. I blew a ride in the Gulfstream for reasons that I knew better, but in the artificial world of a checkride. I blamed it almost totally on the right seater who wasn't up to speed. It took me almost 3 months of cajoling but WE never repeated that fiasco again. He learned but I didn't. Was anything accomplished? I think so. Next guy comes to me for a recurrent checkride in the turbo dildo. A check of licenses shows a line drawn through his instrument rating. Check with TC and they know all about it. Seems the guy was riding right seat for a candidate in a 737 and the captain turned the wrong way on a SID departure so the company fired both people. What burned me was the company used the failure to dismiss a pilot because they didn't have the gonades to do it the proper way. I had to fire this particular pilot a few years before and it's not pleasant. New thinking with training orginizations is that pilots cannot or are not supposed to fail check rides. In my case, one pilot learned something, I and my co-pilot learned something but in the last case, what was learned or accomplished. Boy!, I am sure bouncing around on this. It is going to be interesting to see how our pilots are taking this I am looking for feedback. One thing that is constant is that everone has their own opinion and if we all discuss subjects like the pros we are, we learn and others who read our comments hopefully learn also.
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The average pilot, despite the somewhat swaggering exterior, is very much capable of such feelings as love, affection, intimacy and caring.
These feelings just don't involve anyone else.
Failed my first PPC ever....
Did it again three days later, passed.
Haven't failed since, however if i did, I guess I would brush myself off and do it again.
). There also the fact that always flying in controlled airspace has it's draw backs as the % of vectors in a day is quite high but my question is: you never really hear of those who failed rides I mean is it that rare? I heard somewhere;" There are 2 kinds of pilots in this world, those who have failed rides, and those who will fail rides" is there truth in that?
.
(No foul intended)
