Originally Posted by
3stripes
3 checkride failures shouldn't be acceptable for a professional pilot. I'm sure a lot of guys don't agree with that for whatever reason, but the fact of the matter is standards must be maintained. 1 failure is understandable, 2 is unfortunate, by failure number 3 you should be starting to get the hint that you're just not cut out to fly at a professional level. There are no excuses. If you had other things going on in your life at the time that led to you failing so many checkrides, then you should have put your training off until such time that you could put your full focus and energy into attaining the correct standard.
Too many people think that attaining a professional flying licence is just a case of jumping through hoops. It isn't. There is no barrier to entry these days other than one's ability to pass checkrides and later on, the airline interview.
The standard to pass these checkrides isn't all that high. If you can't meet the standard on three different occasions, then you shouldn't be flying people around for money. Of course failures happen occasionally, but three failures should be a major alarm bell that should prompt you to think that maybe you just aren't cut out for professional flying.
What you are saying would be correct if there were an equal standard of examiners and all examiners performed to the same level. Where I instructed we used several examiners. One we called Santa Claus. He was the one every student wanted because he failed NOBODY. He even fell asleep on a couple of checkrides. We had another examiner who was ex military and a real hard @ss. He probably failed 60% of the applicants the first time and scared the hell out of students. So nobody wanted him, and would only fly with him when Santa Claus was booked. Are you telling me the student that busted three rides with MR Hard @ss was not the kind of professional pilot as someone who went on all their rides with Santa Claus? We had students that would wait for weeks just to get their rides scheduled with Santa. I call BS on this one.....once you get to the 121 world if you are busting checkrides its a different story. But the 91/141 world is so subjective it is hard to judge by failing rides because of the examiners. The CFI ride is the closest you can come to the 121 world because most of the rides are adminstered by the FAA, or examiners the FAA considers to be the best.
THe 3 checkride failure is just a way for Expressjet to weed out applicants and cull the applicants. If the pool gets too small, they will start cutting back on this. Its all supply and demand.