Seven years as a flight instructor and I experienced my first failure as the recommending instructor. I never boasted about never having a student fail. Now I feel I can. I discretely told my follow instructors about this being my first today in our meeting. Makes me feel human again and a big weight off my shoulders. Hopefully this isn't a trend to come. Shouldn't be. The student today missed a step down fix on a RNAV and went to MDA 0.5 too soon. Easy fix. No pun intended.

 

My god, you're done! Time to update that traveling sales resume it looks like.

 

hehe..good one...

 

If one isn't failing every once and a while, something is wrong. While a great instructor will have a pass rate of maybe 90% or better, If it's real close to 100%, that's cause for question IMO and IME. Students aren't perfect and every once and a while they have a bad day. I wouldn't worry about telling fellow instructors, we shared failures at one of my previous jobs all the time, to help each other. We didn't boast of failures, but when you've put literally hundreds of students through courses (yes, that many ), some will fail, you'll have good streaks, and a few bad streaks. If you're a decent instructor, you will learn from the failures, or fix what needs to be fixed. The more you do the job, the more you understand what is meeting the standards and what is not. I never tried to get a "gouge" for a particular check, I always went to the PTS. If the check instructor/dpe/inspector does something against the PTS on the checkride, I have a valid case to bring to that person's superior. Even if I can't get something reversed, I'm not going to let someone get away with conducting checks outside of standards without letting their supervisors know about it. Many failures are legitimate though, as an instructor I could point the student to the right tools, explain how they work, and assess knowledge and what was taught, but it doesn't totally prevent them from making a stupid mistake or getting confused.

I'm glad it's a weight off your shoulders, no instructor should be the end all of knowledge and every human being can learn from others, so you will learn from this.

It's also important to realize the student's perspective during a checkride. Human nature and defense mechanisms will make it so they'll remember some arbitrary reason that they failed, whereas whomever is conducting the check may have very good reasons and grounds for failing them. Don't discount student's testimony, but realize they are human and may have made a mistake, even if they can't admit it at the time. That's really the point, everyone makes mistakes, and hopefully we train and prepare enough to minimize them, but they never go away completely.

 

I like your humility.

 

Thank you. Reading a lot about PTS and that is great. That was the reason for my success rate; only using the PTS as a midway there point. The PTS only teaches someone how to pass a checkride. As instructors we do a huge disservice if that is all the further we train.

 

Seven years?!

Kudos for such a fantastic run. First time I've ever heard of such a streak. You are obviously a natural teacher/mentor. Congrats!

 

Very well said.........

At the airport I taught at, few instructors, except me, would send their students to a particular examiner because of his high failure rate. I don't think this examiner, or any examiner actually "likes" to fail anyone. They just need to be given a reason.

All checkrides are, in a way, an examination of recommending instructors. As a result, I always wanted my students preparation to speak for itself.

Still, stuff happens.

I would be remiss if I didn't share that I too, even after decades of flying, have misinterpreted step downs on a non-precision approach and commenced a descent too soon.

 

There's one looming out there in every approach plate booklet...

 

Imagine teaching foreign students, especially the Chinese. Doesn't matter to them if they pass or fail. They go back home and have a squeaky clean record with no failures. I have heard and witnessed some that would bust the all their checkrides.