By Fred Gibbs

Just to be clear, the opinions and statements made within my articles are strictly mine and may not necessarily reflect any policy or position of the Arizona Pilots Association.

Fred’s Perspective: Checkride Failure Rate Soaring

As a member of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI) and a Master Flight Instructor, I, and our members, are alerted to changing events and evaluating potential effects that could have impact(s) on flight instructors and the broader aviation community.

Private pilot examination failure rates, and in my experience, Instrument ratings and Commercial checkride failure rates as well, have increased dramatically and may be approaching fifty percent. That figure may shock you, and rightfully so. We can all agree that it is an unacceptable failure rate for pilots who have been endorsed to take a check ride, and I personally believe it is especially predominate at small Part 61 flight schools without a (flight school curriculum indoctrinated) DPE on staff.

NAFI has alerted us instructors that over the past summer they have seen a sudden, and alarming, increase in private pilot exam disapprovals. This concern led to an investigation by NAFI. Checking with DPEs from several regions confirmed a similar recent and persistent spike in disapprovals. As we know, DPEs are pilots, so there were strong and varied opinions given about potential causes for the declining pass rate. Seeking objectivity, NAFI has been investigating this situation from various perspectives, making industry contacts, gathering information, and verifying statistics. It is clear to NAFI that a systemic shift has occurred and is affecting aviation from primary learners to airline training. NAFI has determined that this problem needs to be remedied. They are raising awareness, involving stakeholders, and finding solutions.

NAFI, as a member of the General Aviation Joint Safety Committee, will be attending meetings at AOPA headquarters and bring attention to this recent, alarming change in exam outcomes, as well as its ripple effects. NAFI will not be able to tackle this system-wide issue on their own but will spearhead efforts to reverse what is becoming an ever-more-apparent negative trend.

As a flight instructor for almost 45 years, and the chief flight instructor at Wiseman Aviation up here in flagstaff for the past 20 or so years, I can certainly attest to this problem, and have forwarded comments to them for inclusion in any subsequent conversations with the industry. I find it very interesting that a student could miss 2 questions out of 50 on the oral, a passing score of 96% (or an A or A-) in school but FAIL the oral exam! Or, while the student and examiner hold for arriving traffic, and watch the captain of the commuter jet fly the PAPI down to the runway and land 2000 feet past the 1000 foot distance marker, the student will fail the check ride if (s)he lands 200 feet past the 1000 foot distance marker, or heaven forbid, (s)he touches down smoothly and dead on center line just as the stall horn starts chirping, but is 50 feet short of the markers! And we wonder why students get discouraged!

I assume you all know the FAA has a policy that says if an instructor or DPE has a perfect pass rate, they – apparently – are too generous, and need to be reviewed, or vice versa, if an instructor or DPE has a high percentage of failures, they – apparently – are poor instructors but the examiners are doing a fine job!

Discussion point:

So here is the question:

Cowboy Bobby Joe Clayton lives on his 5,000-acre ranch in eastern Montana with his wife, son, and 1,000 head of cattle. He has smoothed out a 1,500-foot landing strip with clear approaches on both ends aligned with the predominant wind data he got from the National Weather Service’s Climatological database. He wants to learn to fly a backcountry balloon-tire Carbon Cub to both survey his ranch and herd his 1,000 head of cattle, plus an occasional trip into the “Big” city of Miles City, MT, 45 miles southwest of his ranch. The nearest airport with a control tower is 117 miles away. Bobby Joe will never get above 10,000 feet nor close to a class B or class C airport, thus does not need – or want – ADS-B out. The most important radio in the airplane is the CB radio to talk to the ranch! He does, however, believe in technology, and has an iPad with foreflight on it to be able to pinpoint locations of his cows to feed back to the ranch via his CB radio.

Now, over here in Newport Beach, California lives Robert J. Clayton, no relation to Bobby Joe of Montana. He also wants to learn to fly, but he wants a Cirrus SR20T so he can fly the family to Colorado and Utah to go skiing in the winter and to their summer place in Baja California. He wants the full G-2000 panel to be able to fly the complex airspace around Los Angeles.

Does one standard for training meet these requirements? Would an instructor approach both pilots the same? Can the ACS, and/or the FAA, really address these unique needs with only one standard of performance? An examiner will tell you there is only one standard, the ACS, and the FAA holds them to it, but it is obvious that one standard does not work here. What ever happened to the “Train as you fly; fly as you trained” philosophy? I believe – and this is my opinion only - a checkride cannot be done to one standard, nor should a perfect score be required to pass. Of course, safety of flight is paramount, but perfection is not!

Geez, even Tom Brady has a bad day, but he doesn’t get a “notice of disapproval” as a quarterback for an intercepted pass and told to go get more training and come back another day! He just keeps striving to get better every play. That’s all I ever expect from a student.

QUIZ of the MONTH:

1. Ok, you are flying into West Bygosh airport, a towered airport with 2 runways. On the sectional chart, it shows the airport surrounded by a dashed blue line with this symbol inside it [-30]. What does that mean?
   1. Subtract 3000 feet from my altitude
   2. Subtract 30 feet from airport elevation
   3. The top of the class D is at 3000 feet
   4. The top of the class D is not 2500 feet above field elevation

2. Does a class C have a mode C veil like Class B?
   1. Nope.
   2. yes.
   3. Only out to 20 limits of the radar service area.
   4. Only directly above the 10 mile radius second tier up to 10,000 feet.

3. When I look at a surface analysis chart, I see lines labeled with numbers like 1004, 1008, 1013, or even 982 or 986. What do they mean?
   1. Isobars
   2. Isotachs
   3. Isotherms
   4. What’s a surface analysis chart??

4. The normal usable range of an (L) class VOR is -
   1. 25 nm
   2. 40nm
   3. 100nm
   4. There ain’t no such thing as an (L) class VOR!

5. Everybody knows what fog is, but did you know pilots have two (2) different kinds of fog, FG and BR. HUH? Really? YUP, and the two-letter identifier for each is different. FG is dense fog, BR is mist (the French word for mist is Bruille. Again, HUH? YUP, weather is international, and other countries got to play some.) Anyway, so what the heck is the difference and how is it differentiated?
   1. The vertical visibility value is reported as less than 500 feet (VV005)
   2. Fog is when the horizontal visibility is less than 1 nautical mile
   3. It becomes mist if the horizontal visibility is better than 5/8^th of a Statue mile
   4. It is strictly up to the weather observer at the airport to make that call.

6. Tis a windy day, and at my airport the wind is almost a direct crosswind from the right. On my private pilot check ride, I was required to land on the centerline according to the ACS, but I chose to land to the right of the centerline because I thought that would give me a bigger margin of safety should the airplane try to suddenly drift left in a gust. By ACS standard, I would fail because I did not land on centerline. Common sense and good aeronautical decision making was certainly more important than a black-and-white one size fits all rule (and mentality).
   1. Should the student pass the crosswind landing performance demonstration while failing to meet the ACS requirement?
   2. Should the student fail the crosswind landing performance demonstration?
   3. Does the examiner have the leeway to bend that requirement?
   4. Should the examiner have the leeway to bend that requirement?

(Answers at the bottom of the Safety Program section.)

SAFETY PROGRAMS

There are now three (3) FAASTeam safety programs on the schedule for the month of January, January 14^th in Payson, January 21^st at Ryan/Tucson, and January 28^th in Yuma. Registration notices for each will be forth coming early January. More programs are planned over the next couple of months around the state. Simply log on to the Internet and go to WWW.FAASAFETY.GOV, click on “Seminars” and start checking for any other upcoming seminars. Masks are optional but are recommended.

Should you desire a particular safety or educational program at your local airport or pilot meeting in the future, such as the BasicMed program, our “Winter Wonderland” snow season special, The Aging Pilot, Radio Phraseology, or my newest one on LIFR approaches, which discusses the how’s, whys, and pitfalls of shooting an approach all the way down to minimums and missed approaches, simply contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or call me at 410-206-3753. Arizona Pilots Association provides the safety programs at no charge. We can also help you organize a program of your choice, and we can recommend programs that your pilot community might really like. There are also a lot of great webinars online, each about an hour long, and worth credits towards your WINGS participation. You might find one that is right up your alley or really “tickles yer fancy”!!

(answers)

#1 – d The negative symbol in front of the number denotes that the top of the class D airspace is NOT the standard 2500 feet AGL. This usually involves a class D airspace/airport underlying a relatively low shelf of class B airspace, like Goodyear or Glendale.

#2 – d While not defined as a veil, the airspace directly over top of any class C airspace is treated just like the airspace over top of a class B. It does not include the airspace in the radar service area or under the shelf!

#3 – a. The lines are defined as Isobars, meaning lines of equal pressure. The unit of measurement of pressure under the metric system, the world standard for measuring stuff, is millibars. All pilots should know that 1013.2Mb (of Mercury) is the same as 29.92 (inches of Mercury). All altitude charts are in metric, i.e., the 5000-foot level is 850Mb, the 10,000-foot level is 700Mb and the 18,000-foot level is the 500 Mb chart. International flying usually requires an altimeter calibrated in millibars, not inches of mercury. Just a piece of trivia here, when you see SLP123 in the remarks section of a METAR, that is simply the altimeter setting in millibars, this example being 1012.3Mb.

#4 – b. FYI, All VORs are categorized, originally into 3 categories, (T) for terminal, only good out to 25nm, (L) for navigation in the airspace up to 18000 feet and out to 40 nm, and (H) VORs, used for navigation between 18000 and 45,000 feet with a range out to 100NM above 45,000 feet. Remember, VORs are line-of-sight radio signals, so your reception depends on your altitude and the ability of any signal getting past a mountain!! Just in case you are wondering, I am pretty sure SR-71’s and U-2’s at 70,000 feet don ‘t use VOR navigation!

#5 – c. Why a weird value like 5/8^th of a nautical mile, you say? Well, remember that weather is in an international format, based on the metric system. The United States filed several exceptions to the format, and solutions were eventually worked out, which is why you see SM after our visibility, KT after our winds, and an A in front of our altimeter settings. The Fog/Mist issue is the same everywhere, but the conflict was, and remains, in the unit of measurement. So, in the US, Mist (light fog) becomes Fog (thick fog) when the visibility drops below 5/8^th of a statute mile which just happens to equal 1 kilometer across the rest of the world!

#6. – You weren’t really expecting an answer here, were you?? But it certainly could lead to a very interesting round table or safety program discussion…

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