Checkride: Filling the squares

And if you’re headed for a career in aviation, being well-compensated for something you love doing is great, too! Whatever your motivation for learning to fly, the common objective for all students remains: learning how to fly the airplane confidently and safely.

The primary job of a designated pilot examiner (DPE) is to determine whether the applicants they test have achieved that goal. Statistically, in most cases the applicants do, with just over 74 percent nationwide passing their initial private pilot checkride. In fewer cases, the checkride does not end well, with 6,265 private pilot disapprovals in 2018. The reasons for these failures are many and varied, but most occur as a result of improper or insufficient preparation with regard to the essential tasks involved with flying the airplane.

As the airman certification standards (ACS) document dictates, there are several flight maneuvers that must be evaluated to complete a practical test, each with its own set of standards for successful completion. It’s understandable that the more challenging the task, the greater the risk of inadequate learning. When difficulties do arise, DPEs will debrief the CFI and applicant, elaborating on the issues that led to the failure. Seasoned DPEs will agree that patterns do emerge when recurring inadequacies are observed. Further investigation usually reveals inadequate/insufficient training or lack of proper/effective practice as the offending culprit. Several particularly demanding tasks come to mind.

Mastery requires frequent and repeated exposure to quality practice. Some form of simulated emergency should be presented during nearly every training session.Stalls. Unfortunately, there are flight instructors who avoid doing them. Even the name—stalls—sounds ominous. And students who are not excited about doing this maneuver to begin with quickly pick up this vibe from their CFI. This leads to never really practicing them enough to get comfortable doing them to the ACS specifications, which require recovery after a full stall, and then recovering at the appropriate climb airspeed.

Simulated emergency procedures. Because of the many variables that can exist for this task, true mastery is required to consistently accomplish it satisfactorily. This requires frequent and repeated exposure to quality practice. Some form of simulated emergency should be presented during nearly every training session, the exception being during the very early phases of training.

Pilotage navigation. With the advent of GPS navigation, too little time is spent actually practicing this vital skill. While it seems old fashioned to demand such an archaic form of navigation to be learned, it all becomes clear when the GPS fails for real.

Basic instrument maneuvers. Since the aeronautical experience required for private pilots is specified at a minimum of three hours, a filling-the-square mentality is frequently displayed when exactly 3.0 hours of training has been provided. It is unrealistic to believe that the sole purpose for learning basic instrument skills for private pilots—surviving an accidental IMC encounter—can be learned in precisely the same time for every student, just like every student cannot be expected to solo with exactly 10 hours’ instruction. While some can, most need additional training.

Crosswind takeoffs and landings. These often clearly receive insufficient practice, with little or no crosswind control inputs and subsequent directional control difficulties, drifting, and side-load problems during the checkride.

Soft- and short-field takeoffs and landings. Hard to believe, but under the guise of safety and risk management, there are actually flight schools out there that prohibit their students from practicing these demanding skills, only permitting their CFIs to “demonstrate” once, each of these until the very end of their training—then, they seem to hope that the DPE will not notice their students’ deficiencies. No student can learn to fly any maneuver by simply observing a CFI’s demonstration. These maneuvers demand more, not less, training and practice.

Forward slip to a landing. This is another under-practiced task that often shows up during checkrides. As with all of the above tasks, instead of shying away, we need to embrace them, and practice them regularly and correctly—in accordance with the FAA Airplane Flying Handbook—to achieve the consistent, safe performance that all DPEs hope to observe during checkrides.

Bob Schmelzer is a Chicago-area designated pilot examiner, and a retired United Airlines captain and Boeing 777 line check airman. He has been an active gold seal flight instructor since 1972.