Instructors failing Students
#21
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2019
Position: ATL FO
Posts: 189
To the OP,
What exactly are you looking for by coming to an internet forum? Do you need other adults to reassure you that you're a good pilot despite your past failures? As an instructor, theres a delicate line to walk between wasting the customers money and over training to sending the student to a checkride too early. YOU as the customer need to speak up if you aren't comfortable and confident. It's really not the instructor's job to spoon feed you every chapter of the FAR/AIM or the PHAK. Take some responsibility for yourself, your training and your career. You have a copy of the ACS I assume? The test is right there.
You're correct that one or two failures probably won't be the end of the road if you take ownership of them in an interview. But it seems like you think the world is out to get you and nothing is your fault. You might have zero failures on your record but no one is going to hire you with an attitude like that. Might want to change your strategy.
What exactly are you looking for by coming to an internet forum? Do you need other adults to reassure you that you're a good pilot despite your past failures? As an instructor, theres a delicate line to walk between wasting the customers money and over training to sending the student to a checkride too early. YOU as the customer need to speak up if you aren't comfortable and confident. It's really not the instructor's job to spoon feed you every chapter of the FAR/AIM or the PHAK. Take some responsibility for yourself, your training and your career. You have a copy of the ACS I assume? The test is right there.
You're correct that one or two failures probably won't be the end of the road if you take ownership of them in an interview. But it seems like you think the world is out to get you and nothing is your fault. You might have zero failures on your record but no one is going to hire you with an attitude like that. Might want to change your strategy.
#22
A lousy Instrument instructor was one of the best things to happen to me. I had no right to take my checkride based on my level of knowledge. I vowed that I would never show up to a checkride unprepared ever again. And you know what? I didn't. Good instructors, bad instructors, and indifferent instructors have been a part of my training ever since, but I realized the final say in my level of preparation was me. I will say, that is a difficult thing to ascertain as a Private student. A couple more ratings under your belt and you should have your instructors figured out pretty quickly.
Like several other posters have stated, there's a lot of other options out there, and you're the customer. All the best, and hopefully you can figure out what it's going to take to get you through training.
Like several other posters have stated, there's a lot of other options out there, and you're the customer. All the best, and hopefully you can figure out what it's going to take to get you through training.
#24
Also bad luck in the GA real-world environment (which you can mitigate by very thorough prep).
#25
Disinterested Third Party
Joined APC: Jun 2012
Posts: 5,926
The concept is that of pilot in command. You are responsible for you. The buck stops with you. There is no magic osmosis machine that injects pilot judgment, pilot skills, or pilot abilities or pilot knowledge into you. You are expected to do this, and it will be this way whether you're studying for your private pilot certificate, or completing a type rating for a transport category four engine turbojet aircraft.
Yes, if you fail a checkride, you will never be able to say "I had a bad instructor," or "my school was lacking." To say that in a job interview will only be viewed as a negative assessment of you, and it has nothing to do with whether you passed a checkride as a student pilot. It has everything to do with your ability to be honest, to be humble and to accept responsibility for your own actions, your own career, your own study, and yes, your own failures. Yes, in this industry, you own your failures, and yes, they stay with you forever. There need be no greater incentive to study your ass off, need there?
Not getting what you need from watching a video? Then go buy a book. Buy five. Highlight them until you run out of highlighters, then go buy, more. Write in the margins. Make flash cards. Put up cockpit posters. Buy a model airplane and hand-fly it in traffic patterns around your room while reciting your memory items. Learn to do estimates and mental math without the gizmos, because the gizmos will fail. You're to be a pilot, not a video game player. Put on the big boy or big girl pants. No more games. There is no law, regulation, requirement, restriction, or rule of thumb which says that you can't set higher goals for yourself, or study more material, or study longer, or try harder. The only person who limits that is you.
In the cockpit there is no higher authority than the pilot in command, because his or her decisions are final. Air traffic control does not command your cockpit. If ATC makes a mistake, they go home at the end of the day. You may not. Your instructor is not taking your checkride. You are. When you are pilot in command, you are signing for the airplane, and taking ultimate responsibility for the outcome of the flight. You are expected to take the same level of responsibility for the outcome of your career.
If you don't like your instructor, or if you don't think your instruction is adequate, then seek a different instructor. Who is paying the bill?
YOU are responsible for you. Embrace that concept. It will be essential for your entire career, and anything less will not be tolerated.
Which part of this industry is "incredibly easy?"
Instructors are watched, according to their student's success. An instructor with a low student pass rate is placed under surveillance by the FAA, and may be subject to re-examination. The purpose of the gold seal placed on an instructor certificate is directly tied to student pass rate, and though you're new in the industry, the FAA has a long history of taking the competency of instructors seriously. If you question the competency of your instructor, then get a different instructor.
If you feel that a student shouldn't be accountable for his behavior, his preparation, or his studies, or his performance, then it's a lesson you haven't learned. Learn it.
An instructor may be the most competent, savvy, correct, and skilled instructor in all the flying world, yet cannot force a student to learn, and cannot make a student study. If you're not passing, then you can blame the instructor until the contrails dissipate, but it will still be you failing your checkride and any attempt to blame your instructor will only ever reflect badly on you. You are preparing to be a pilot in command who takes responsibility for himself, his flight, his aircraft, his operation, his passengers. As a pilot in command, take responsibility for your success, and your failures. There will never be a time when you'll impress an interviewer by making excuses and blaming others, whether it's a flight school, instructor, examiner, inspector, aircraft, or former employer. Don't ever do that.
You cannot be responsible for anyone else, be it one other, or several hundred, until you accept full responsibility for yourself. That's how it works.
At the end of the day, the mechanic goes home. The dispatcher goes home. The examiner goes home. The chief pilot goes home. Crew schedulers, flight followers, briefers, linemen, and everyone else goes home. If you don't do your job, you look suspiciously like a smoking hole in the ground, as do your passengers, cargo, and fellow employees. Abdicating responsibility to others, and putting off our failures to prepare on anyone else, is to embrace that smoking hole.
That smoking hole is not your friend, only insofar as it may motivate you to stay far, far away.
Welcome to aviation.
#26
The aircraft doesn’t know if you’ve had a good instructor or a bad one.
Or if you learn differently than other people.
Or if no one ever told you that.
Or if you have too much on your plate to learn every detail that might be relevant.
Or if it hurts your self-esteem to think you might have to work harder than someone else.
Or if you have other issues on your mind.
Or if the timing is poor.
Or if you didn’t anticipate the weather - or even bother to check it.
Or if you are just plain having a bad day.
And it doesn’t care.
Or if you learn differently than other people.
Or if no one ever told you that.
Or if you have too much on your plate to learn every detail that might be relevant.
Or if it hurts your self-esteem to think you might have to work harder than someone else.
Or if you have other issues on your mind.
Or if the timing is poor.
Or if you didn’t anticipate the weather - or even bother to check it.
Or if you are just plain having a bad day.
And it doesn’t care.
#28
On Reserve
Joined APC: Dec 2019
Posts: 19
I have busted a few checkrides along the way it happens dont worry about it. Learn from the mistakes and push forward.
If you become a CFI use the pitfalls that you recgonized from your instructors and train better students. Push to be a step higher from there level.
When your flying people or cargo for money and you find the airplane or weather is not good delay or dont fly it.
Everyone gets cought up on schedules and timing wanting everything to run flawless, sometimes its better to just say no we have to fix this first before we go or we have to wait awhile for the storm to pass.
If you become a CFI use the pitfalls that you recgonized from your instructors and train better students. Push to be a step higher from there level.
When your flying people or cargo for money and you find the airplane or weather is not good delay or dont fly it.
Everyone gets cought up on schedules and timing wanting everything to run flawless, sometimes its better to just say no we have to fix this first before we go or we have to wait awhile for the storm to pass.
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