I wasn't trying to imply that basketball or law is the same as flying, I was looking at it statistically since that's what is thrown in my face here at work. They are always doing surveys or market research but they will never tell me how they are basing surveys. Also having worked in TV 15 or so years ago, I know how the media is.

I have always had an interest in aviation and looked into persuing it several times but it never worked out for me.

Thanks for the breakdown.

 

Passing or failing a check ride the first time around is not an indicator of good judgement. You could pass a million check rides with flying colors and still crash an airplane into the side of a mountain due to lack of good judgement. I think flight training and testing should have emphasis on good decision making, CRM, and judgement skills vs. on how good you can perform a lazy 8.

 

Yep.

Part 135/121 management should also issued operating certs based upon how they help pilots stay proficient and support pilots who make the safe decision, not the profitable decision. This is a TEAM effort.

 

Ahh, those stupid Lazy 8's, how much money was wasted on learning those!

 

They are more fun to do in an RJ..............

 

Maybe we should give what the public wants; a pilot that has a spotless record, no failed checkrides or stage checks, and a clean driving record . But then the public will complain because there won't be any pilots to fly the planes. All of us, from the low time to the guys on here with tens of thousands of hours have failed atleast one checkride, or will in the future. It's human nature because we aren't robots.

 

In the cockpit? It's sad, but we pretty much are...

 

Prior to 135/121 rides and type ratings, I failed every other flight check ride. It was always something small at the end of the flight, but a failure regardless. I failed commercial multi on the last single engine approach because I did not verbalize that I was feathering the prop. No argument - it was my error. As far as tasks go, I passed 98% of the tasks, but 100% is the requirement. I never failed an oral and my lowest written test score was 94.

For those of you with perfect records, you are only one small error from failing a check ride. You have probably already made that error but performed so well otherwise that it was overlooked.

Sorry for the rant, carry on!

 

I agree with Gtech...and to bloviate on what he says...The general public(media) see this as a black and white issue. Good pilots pass checkrides. Bad pilots fail checkrides. What they don't understand in their short sightedness is that it is much more complex than this. First of all, everybody is going to fail a checkride. That's been said already. Second, while we have practical test standards, DE's are anything but standard. As a CFI I've had a student go 180 degrees the wrong direction on the cross country portion and pass because he was able to find himself on a sectional chart while I've had students fail for what turns out to be minutia. Third, who is the better pilot? The pilot who takes 2x-3x the average dual to get to standards and passes a checkride on the first attempt or the pilot who gets consistently to standards after minimum dual required and makes one minor misake on the checkride and tanks it? I'm sure there are many more points I'm missing but like I said, it's not a pass/fail black/white issue.

 

I know a DPE who is furious about "robot" training replacing "pilot" training. There has been too much focus on procedures and not enough on "Why are we doing this?" or "Why does this happen?"