Originally Posted by
74plb
At least he was in the fwd obs seat. I had the same JCAB checker for my sim ride and my JCAB flight check. It was NRT-HNL, he pounded me with questions for the first three hours, went to his seat in first class had his meal, then came back to pound me some more. Didn't tell me I had passed until the debrief in the hotel. I was more brain-dead than usual,but I had a good night at the ShoreBird. This was the culmination of 6 months of training.
On the way back I was deadhead and asked him how my partner was doing on the legback. He said " I don't know, we are not finished yet" Not a whole lot of humor with the JCAB.
I dealt with them in Moses Lake and they weren't much fun there either.
Not taking away from your comments, but that appears to be the left front seat to me, not the observer's seat.
Based on my experience and conversations with very experienced check airmen at several carriers, there is no reason besides sport for that sort of grilling for 90%+ of candidates. If you can't determine their competency in a couple of hours, then the checker isn't qualified to be in his position.
This is sort of the idiocy I point to with to many non-U.S. carriers. They are very concerned about making certain a crewmember could build a radio from scratch, but tolerate or even promote a cross-cockpit gradient of authority that completely destroys CRM and synergy.