Airline Pilot Central Forums - My CFI checkride experience

Quote:

Originally Posted by tm602 (Post 2547719)

After 32 years in aviation my observation is...YES.
Many years ago failed on my CFI initial. Oral was 5 hours, went fine. Manuevers fine, takeoffs landings done, just one last landing. Examiner wanted "soft field, no flaps, with short approach, on the numbers". Well we all know no such thing exists. So I did my best to set it up and as I expected by 500 AGL it clearly wasn't going to work out so I did a go around. Failed for "lack of instructional knowledge on landings". I asked what that meant. He told me "instructional knowledge" was being able to do any landing without doing a go around. Man, my CFI was ****ed. Called the FSDO, and they agreed with us. But, the FAA having not been present, well I was outta luck.
Soooo, do the obligatory 3 hours, rent the plane. Fly it to the other airport, do ONE landing, pay him another $600, and got a nice new white ticket this time. Ironic, he later died in a plane crash himself.

Wow... Thats crazy. Mine was somewhat similar. Busted the oral because he wanted me to rattle off definitions verbatim and I didn't have verbatim definitions in my notebook. He wouldn't let me reference books. I polished up my notebook the way he told me to, paid him again and did a 6 hour oral and had to postpone the flight. The day before the flight, he called to tell me he was just involved in a gear up and wouldn't be able to do my flight. I had to schedule with a new guy to do it all over again. It took me over 3 months to do the checkride from start to finish.