In the airline world, there are very few pilots with a failure at any point in their flying lives - including the training and flying that led up to their current jobs. The motivation to pass every training event and checkride is very high once one has reached the airlines, for a few reasons. One is that word of a failed checkride for any given pilot usually travels like wildfire to the respective pilot's crew base - "Hey, did you hear that Joe So-and-so failed his PC last week?" Most of us have no desire to be THAT guy. Another reason is pay related. If a line qualified pilot fails a PC, he will be removed from flight status, without pay, until he passes. Most of us are not in a financial position to be removed from flight status due to a failure. Thirdly, most of us who might fail a PC would have to face the embarrassment of admitting to our families that we failed and were removed from flight status without pay. I would be horrified at the thought of that myself.

Thus, the motivation to succeed each and every time is very, very high.

Also, for most of my career - up until maybe four years ago, competition for the job was usually enough to motivate pilots with airline aspirations to work extra hard at NOT failing at any level of training or checking, simply due to that fact that it could come back to haunt you later - at the job interview. There were too many highly qualified pilots with ZERO failures to risk showing up with one of your own.

For all of these reasons, in the twenty six years I've been a pilot, I've never had one failure of any kind. I simply treat each and every training and checking event as if my job counted on it. Almost every singly pilot I know at this level will honestly tell you that he or she has never had a failure either. That's just a fact.

I will admit, however, that the paradigm may be shifting toward more of the applicants having had failures in their past - I don't consider this a good thing.