No do you think that the ten of thousands of airline pilots that are flying around all have passed every checkride?? I been 50% present have failed something along the way.

How does a person fail a 121 recurrent checkride and not know it?

Gotcha....

Yeah it would unfortunately.... not as bad as someone with two but that is the world we live in now.

That seems highly unlikely since you would need to be re-trained and re-tested.

An instructor can rewind, train, and retest a maneuver on the fly and that actually does get documented on the checklist (supposed to be anyway) but that does not normally count as a failure of the ride.

Right, I am pretty sure that the instructor would not let him go fly around with a failed checkride... hard to believe

The moral of the story here is do not lie. This is almost always one of the first questions you are asked during the app/screening process. When I got hired many years ago that was one of the first questions on the pilot paperwork after I arrived at the interview. I checked yes and in the explaination box thoroughly explained what happened. I was never even asked about it in the actual interview and that was that. Got the job and never had to look over my shoulder.

FWIW I asked HR to see all the stuff they got on me. They didn't get my entire FAA file just the PRIA. I am sure it differs from each airline. Lets just say through no fault of your own something hits you while you are on push or taxi. You can bet they are still going to to a thorough investigation and if that busted ride comes up that wasn't reported you are toast. I have heard of it happening before.

As far as traffic tickets/DUIs go most applications ask for EVERYTHING and I would be very careful about the whole expungement/it dissapears after x amount of years thing. A thorough background check not only asks for traffic records but for court records, arrest recorts etc. One guy that was upgrading to captain in my transition class finally got a job offer with a big airline just around a decade or so ago. He was talking about how he had an attorney get his 2 wreckless driving convictions expunged and how it probably helped immensely. Turns out they figured it out through arrest/court records and he got the boot. There is always a paper trail for everything and lying is the most surefire way to get yourself exiled from the 121 industry. Every application I have ever seen asks have you EVER had a ticket/checkride bust/DUI, etc etc. It asks for everything not just the ones that are currently on your record/haven't been expunged, in fact a lot of apps I have filled out specifically say expunged means nothing to them and lying is grounds for immediate termination even if it is found out years later. I like not looking over my shoulder personally.

Ole Marv really hosed you guys didn't he?

He said during the ride, the instructor had him redo a maneuver. He did it fine the second time. This was not AQP. He was then on his way. Never crossed his mind that redoing a maneuver was a failure. In his file, it was. This cost him a job.

That's a fishy story to say the least. I'm not a checkairman but I've always been under the impression that if you bust a ride, the sim stops, you get out, you go home. Retrain is just a retrain.

Always a good idea to disclose checkride failures. Just be honest, explain what happened and how you learned from it. If the company finds out about it after your hired (and I have seen this) your are asked to step outside of class for a moment and bring your stuff. then no one knows where you went then some guy or gal comes in and re-emphasizes about disclosing stuff etc.

Just tell your friend to be honest. Hope this helps. :)