Absolutely, and it leads me to my next question. If you were on a hiring board, when would one's checkride history become a concern? I am hearing that some airlines are instituting a maximum number, which I think is stupid. No, you don't want a guy who becomes a safety and/or training liability. HOWEVER, what if the applicant just came up through a screw-ball training program? What about the guy with no failures who's uncle was a DPE?

Personally, I think a common-sense dichotomy is in order:

- Number of checkrides failed versus passed, and over what time period
- Nature of failures
- Culture of previous training programs (141 v. 61, Trans States J31, CoEx 1900, etc.)
- Ability on technical/simulator evaluations
- Professional references

Without know the answers to the above questions, how is an operation going to have ANY idea of what they're hiring? To my knowledge NWA has always held a "more than two and you need not apply" policy, which I think is short-sighted. And then of course you have the moron running PCL, who claims that, had they known about two additional GA failures, CA Renslow wouldn't have "been in that seat."


Regardless, I don't know how you guys do it. I have ultimate respect for those still fighting the good fight in 121 operations. Keep your heads up! I'm trying to influence some change "from the inside," but we all know how effective the FAA's "tombstone mentality" is.