glorifdbusdrivr

Just came back from a 121 checkride and ended up failing it. Just got a little too nervous and ended up overthinking some questions. Morale is a little low right now and I just wanted to see if anyone has failed a 121 check at a regional level and how that played out for them down the road with regards to getting hired at a major. The only other failure is my multiengine checkride. Thanks.

Aero1900

There's never been a better time to fail a checkride!

Seriously though, if you can take responsibility upon yourself and not deflect blame or make excuses, you'll be just fine.

Learn from it and move on

rickair7777

Two busts (at any level) is going to delay your career progression. But it's not a show stopper.

All else being equal, the computer will pull an app with zero busts before one with two. You can try to enhance your resume in other ways to counter the busts.

Take FULL responsibility, be able to articulate what you learned and how you've improved yourself.

No gentle way to say this: Do NOT fail another training event. Many of us who pay attention suspect that three busts is the point where it gets very hard to get a call from the top-tier (although the pilot shortage may ultimately force their hand on that).

PotatoChip

I failed a 121 Oral.
I thought it was total BS (it was).
Of course, I never said that, and took responsibility and moved on with my life. I drank a 12 pack that night afterwards. You get the idea...
I've since been hired at a major, and a couple other places.
The failure was 10 years ago, and have since been through three more 121 programs, a couple types, etc with nary a problem. It's a frustrating mark on my record, and it still rankles me to think about it. But can't change it.
Move forward. You'll have to create a better resume than others who will get hired before you doing less. Sucks. Part of this career.

Royaldane

"Two busts (at any level) is going to delay your career progression. But it's not a show stopper."

Rickair7777 check ride failures especially at the primary level aren't deal breakers to legacy carriers. I know of multiple pilots from regional carriers who have 4+ check ride failures who were hired at legacy carriers. And I'm talking 10+.
Its absolutely about how you own it and less so about being that perfect pilot IMHO

rickair7777

That is counter to what I have observed on the ground, and what my buddies with insight into legacy hiring are telling me.

Multiple failures will DEFINITELY get your app filtered out by the computer, so you have no opportunity to own it.

Someone with anything even remotely like 10 busts will never get an interview call from "the herd"... only way that would happen is with some serious inside pull, or maybe affirmative action tickets.

I agree that if you somehow actually GET an interview call, your odds of explaining GA busts in the past are pretty good... these days if they rant you an interview they basically intend to hire you unless you blow it somehow. But the trick today is getting the call. 20+ years ago they would often interview 20 and hire 2-3, so back then the trick was actually passing the interview (getting the call often happened when you had 1,000 hours TPIC). They would also run of class of 13 to get 10 on line, so training was merciless... not much spoon feeding.

DontLookDown

I think he meant he knows over 10 people who have gotten hired with multiple checkride failures.

Having more than 10 failures would be insane.

You could fail your PPL, CPL, IFR, CFI, CFII and still only be halfway to ten!

rickair7777

I probably know ten people who got hired at the Big Six with busts... one or two busts. Everybody I can think of with more than two busts is at a regional or LCC. I'm sure there are some at the legacies for whatever reason, but I've definitely observed that those getting the calls have either pretty clean records or insider connections (even connections are not a guarantee in that case, I can think of two guys with connections who expected to be shoe-ins to DL and UA, but their training/flying records got in the way).

I have to stick to my guns that if you have 3+ busts you might want to carefully consider taking an available LCC opportunity rather than holding out for the top tier. Would suck to hold out for five years and then end up at the LCC anyway.

With that said, I suspect the top tier will get to the point in the shortage where they can no longer hold irrelevant busts from your distant GA past against an otherwise qualified professional turbine pilot. But if you have more recent busts, especially in 121, they will be less forgiving of those if there is a pattern.

If you have to hook rides, better if it's entry-level GA, and better still if it's CFI rides.