Mentor Matters: Beating the bust

Even now, with a mature light jet training ecosystem that more properly accommodates the different needs of first-time and nonprofessional jet pilots, checkride failures occur frequently. As one highly accomplished physician put it, his two weeks of training and the ultimate checkride were the hardest things he’s ever done—medical school included.

Where do these errors occur? Knowing this provides a critical leg up for the would-be jet pilot, as well as for any pilot approaching an annual proficiency check, itself a carbon copy of the initial type ride. Broadly speaking, the unsatisfactory performance falls into three categories.

Instrument flying 101

Jets are airplanes, and fast-moving ones at that. Frankly, many pilots enter training with rusty instrument skills. They have become so used to flying their previous airplane on the autopilot for most operations that even holding altitude while hand-flying presents a problem. That’s to say nothing of hand-flying an approach with multiple configuration and altitude changes.

Furthermore, as one examiner puts it, they often lack the proficiency to fly approaches other than “vectors to final for the ILS” at their home field. Now consider that instrument flying is a constantly changing field. The proliferation of WAAS approaches, for example, requires pilots to be conversant on an alphabet soup of minimums and transitions. Pilots who have long been flying without any regular training can fall into a rut of visual approaches and vectored ILSs—only to end up woefully behind the curve when put into a high-pressure training environment with three different, back-to-back types of approaches.

Profiles/SOPs

Flying jets is not a seat-of-the-pants affair. Some manufacturers produce documents running hundreds of pages with detailed recommendations on the best ways to accomplish everything from preflight to shutdown. There are usually very good reasons why this switch is to be flipped before that knob is to be turned, even if there’s no obvious (to the pilot) logic why the order would matter.

Pilots who don’t master the standard operating procedures (SOPs) and maneuver profiles of their new aircraft account for a large number of checkride busts. If the manufacturer says that on a go-around you are to bring the flaps up one setting before gear retraction, but you move the gear handle first, that’s reason enough for a failed maneuver and disapproved checkride. Nearly every pilot I’ve ever trained underestimates the time required to fully memorize the emergency procedures, SOPs, and profiles of a new jet. When under the stress of a two-hour-plus checkride—and particularly when managing an aircraft or simulator flying on only one engine—the sequence of strict procedural steps can suddenly prove impossible to recall.

Flight management system/autopilot management

Easily three-quarters or more of the difficulty in learning to command a new jet is commonly attributed to fully wrapping the mind around the flight management system (FMS) and autopilot—and especially the interface between the two that must be constantly and precisely managed. Pilots taking their checkride are expected to understand every autopilot mode and be fully aware of what they have asked the autopilot to do, what it is actually doing, and what it’s going to do next. Based on personal experience, the inability to understand and manage the autopilot accounts for more type-rating checkride failures than any other cause.

Then there’s the matter of the autopilot mode annunciator, or the autopilot status bar on the Garmin G1000 and G3000 displays. Nearly every examiner cites inadequate scan of the autopilot status bar as a leading cause of checkride disapprovals. The status bar callouts explicitly tell the pilot what the autopilot is doing right now, and what it will do next. Think you’re in approach mode? Better check the status bar; you may have selected heading mode instead. It seems that many pilots regularly omit the status bar from their scan. Then they’re surprised by an unexpected autopilot action.

Avoid becoming a statistic

You can prepare against all the common reasons for checkride failure before the type-rating training even starts. Quality time spent with an experienced instrument instructor in a light piston single with a glass panel can ensure a pilot’s instrument flying and automation management are finely honed before jet training begins.

While there currently are no light pistons with the Collins Pro Line or Garmin G3000 cockpit found in some light jets, the Garmin G1000 that is ubiquitous in newer piston singles is a fantastic stand-in for either. Pilots who are truly expert in the FMS and autopilot of a G1000-equipped Skyhawk will have an enormous leg up on learning any glass cockpit they may encounter in a new jet.

Likewise, rigorous study of checklists, SOPs, and profiles before starting the type training is a must. There’s no reason to go into a type-rating course cold. Any training provider such as FlightSafety International or CAE should be happy to provide a pre-study package of course material. For best results, start flying the procedures in this coursework at least a month before the training begins. It will spare you a lot of confusion once you’re in the simulator and pay valuable dividends during the tension-filled checkride.

Neil Singer is a master CFI with more than 8,500 hours.