When someone fails a checkride it is always a mixture of elements conspiring to cause the failure. In fact most pilots fail a checkride one at one point or another, so your career is not over by any means. As far as what went wrong on this ride, I have no doubt your instructor may not have been as excellent as he should have been due to the slow pace of commercial students coming along. The commercial maneuvers are tricky without regular practice and even harder to teach. And as III Corps said, your examiner should not have belittled you for failing either and that was very unprofessional. Unfortunately not all examiners are aware how they are coming across. You have my sympathy there and I would like to point out that I have met some truly exemplary examiners in my day, and not all of them are this tough. And despite your troubles I recommend you ask your instructor to get you ready for a retest as soon as you feel up to it, a few days perhaps. Don't hold his laxity against him because although it is not acceptable it is also a fact that many instructors suffer from this same problem and you may very well be in his shoes one day. Let him try and get you ready for your retake, he should be sensitive to the fact your failure reflects on his own performance. He will admire you for sharing the blame and I think he will try harder to get you ready this time. Failure is the pillar of success. Good luck.
Last edited by Cubdriver; 08-07-2008 at 06:29 PM.