Originally Posted by
PilotCrusader
As usual Kit does a crappy job of explaining things. The media sensalionist fruit is going after "Lions and Tigers and TRAINING FAILURES! OH MY!!!"
He doesn't explain that a check failure is much different than say, getting a failing grade in school. The FAA chases after DPEs that have too high of a pass rate. They chase after APDs for the same as well. Failures exists because the FAA mandates it. It has very different meaning to the general public because the can only liken it to school failures.
Exactly. People hear the word failure and relate that to crash or being unsafe. I really think they need to reevaluate the checkride process. I'm not advocating for lowering standards by any means, but maybe each maneuver or evaluating factor should be scored on a 1-10 and you actually receive a percentage grade. Scoring an 85% but having to do a retrain on something is certainly better than say somebody really mucking it up and scoring a 50% overall. The way it is now, there is no differentiation.
So rather than having to ask how many failures a pilot has, we could ask what's your overall checkride score? You could really differentiate a pilot's skill level. Is there really a difference between a guy or gal who averages a 95% but messed up a steep turn in their private checkride, compared to someone who averages a 90% with a clean record? I don't think so but the way the system is setup now, there's no way to compare pilots in that way.
The pass/fail system we have now does not equate to the pass/fail system in some college courses that the public is familiar with. I had a couple pass/fail classes in college and you had to try really hard to not pass the class, basically show up and you were all good. We all know approaching a checkride that way is a recipe for disaster.