njd1

No need for PM. Everyone can benefit.

I should say up front that if you screw up one thing on the checkride, the checkride is officially busted. If you make an error, and then correct it (assuming it's correctable... not all screw ups are), there is a possibility that the examiner will call it a "debrief item" and simply talk about it afterward.

If you bust a maneuver fairly early in the checkride most if not all examiners will give you an opportunity to continue the checkride and complete as many maneuvers as possible. As long as you're the kind of person who can let go of the failure and get on with the business of flying the airplane (and all pilots really should have the mental discipline to do this by the time you get to the airlines), I recommend you do this, as it will minimize the number of things you have to do on the recheck. And take it from me -- you REALLY want to minimize your exposure on a recheck, because if you screw that up, you won't need to stick a fork in yourself to know you're done.

1) Make sure you do as many published missed approaches as you can get in training. To keep things moving instructors will tend to want to have you on a heading straight out (or nearly so) on each missed, and when single engine they will actually encourage you to request alternate missed approach instructions for a straight out departure. That works until the examiner says "unable" or you're so busy you forget to ask for alternate instructions. I did precisely one published missed in the last Sim (mock checkride). That was a instructor / training oversight I did not catch because I was half asleep that week. Guess what maneuver caused my initial bust?

The reason published missed approaches are a bit challenging is that the ****ty Honeywell AFCS of this $30M airplane is too stupid to realize you're below Vfs and hence bank angle has to be limited so you can't just call "FMS NAV" at 400 feet and follow the FD as that will lead to excessive bank angles (which would be a bust, if you hadn't guessed). You effectively need to fly the initial missed approach segments in HDG mode. Of course according to SOP you can't touch the guidance panel yourself without the AP on so you have to call out the headings you need. You could ask for FD off to avoid the distraction and fly raw data but trust me when I say that is harder than it sounds when new to the airplane so I don't recommend it.

2) Do not forget the "set missed approach altitude" call on your approaches, as that will set you up for a failure on the missed approach (think altitude bust).

3) V1 cuts are surprisingly easy to get right and then get horribly wrong in the E170. This is the only maneuver in the airplane that tricked me into believing I had mastered it initially, only to screw it up later in training and before the checkride. Part of my overconfidence probably came from observing my sim partner, who required five attempts to get one right. He crashed the sim (red screen) the first four times. I required three attempts to avoid bank angle warnings but I never crashed.

The main message of V1 cuts is that they are almost completely flown with rudder - not ailerons. Resist the urge to correct bank angle with ailerons. Yes, you can do it, but the yoke has to be rapidly "pulsed" in the desired direction. If you try to apply a smooth control input in the required direction as you were likely trained to do by this point, that will give time for the spoilers to come up and bad things will happen (think PIO) as you try to correct the problem.

When I was having trouble with V1 cuts later in training a CA seat fill / instructor told me to sit on my hands (literally). Then he said "use rudder to keep it on track" and he used the backup pitch trim button on the console to rotate the airplane and keep it on the pitch command bar. It works.

BTW, even my 6000 hour time in type seat fill CA did a pretty gnarly V1 cut the first time he tried to demonstrate one to me. His second attempt was pretty good. As both he and the instructor admitted, we all suck at these because we never do them. Same with published missed approaches or go-arounds. Apparently the average crew goes around 3 times a YEAR at this company. And when was the last time you ever were ever asked to fly anything but runway heading on a missed (particularly single engine)? Yea, I thought so.

4) Flaps/Slats failure. One of the more challenging manuevers as it is typically set up on a non-precision approach (LOC) and you're approaching at ~185K and 1000 FPM down, which is dangerously close to the GPWS limits. If you screw up and don't stay on the glidepath, attempts to correct closer to the runway may result in a GPWS warning (SINK RATE). Get one and correct, you're okay. Get two, you bust.

Note that if you screw up and go around that is okay as it's considered good judgment. One seat fill / CA told me that if you see 3 white on the PAPI you should be primed for a go-around. This can be salvaged if you're really on the mark, but 4 white means a go-around always as you will never be able to increase the angle of descent sufficiently without the GPWS *****ing, i.e. you'll probably need 1200-1400 FPM to correct and that won't work).

5) Visual approaches. I never got to this as it's typically the last maneuver on a successful checkride, but a classmate busted his initial checkride on this maneuver. He hadn't yet realized, as I had earlier in training, that at least in this phase of your training you need to keep the autopilot on until you're aligned with the runway and at your calculated TOD point as it is surprisingly easy to fixate and lose altitude awareness. Then you can disconnect and then put the top tip of the FPV on the horizon bar to get your 3 degree GS. Remember to keep up your scan both inside and outside the airplane. If you fixate, you're done.

BTW, you'll need to do the math in reverse (cleared the visual at 2500 feet means 2500 / 3 ~= 8 = start down at 8 miles out) to get on the correct GP before you use the FPV trick.

Summary:

Flying in the face of the mantra "train as you fly, fly as you train", they'll impose lots of stupid restrictions on you during your checkride, like your 10000 hour CA is dumb and dutiful. If you tell him to go FLAPS 5 at 250K he'll do that. And you'll bust. Most seat fill CAs try to work around this idiocy and give you hints, but there is a strict limit to what they can do. FYI, in AQP recurrent, this is not the case and you're judged not as an individual but as a crew. CRM is actually encouraged and you are allowed to pass if your crew partner catches your errors. Why the hell this isn't the standard for a checkride in an airplane that requires two pilots is beyond me.

Concrete example: on the visual approach in the real world normally you would ask your PM to load the approach for the runway so you could use the GP or GS as a vertical path reference. TOO BAD SUCKER, you can't do that on the checkride. You could then ask the PM to bring up the runway in the FMS, which will give you DME to the threshold and most examiners will let that slide. If the examiner is in a ****y mood because he just had $4000 worth of camping equipment stolen out of his car at the hotel in the ****hole otherwise known as STL (yea, true story) and he denies that too, you can use the DME to the ARP (airport reference point, or center of the airport) and go through the mental gymnastics to calculate the correction to the threshold. Oh, and did I mention that the examiner has the option of turning off the PAPI even if it exists at the simulated airport? Remember to keep the touchdown spot steady in your field of view like you always have.

My advice to anyone who is a bit nervous about making the huge leap to airline flying, particularly if this is your first jet, is to go to a company that uses AQP initial. There is no official checkride....just maneuvers validation. You can have a brain fart and screw up, but as long as you can demonstrate the maneuvers to standards before time is up you pass. And that's exactly the way it should be. Had I been given that opportunity I'd be flying the line right now rather than scheduling interviews and wondering whether I'll ever make it to the LCCs or Majors.