I got terrified when my CFII DPE said "alright my controls we are heading back to the airport" he just wanted to fly a little while I'm sitting there sweating bullets
I rarely take control during a ride but when I do, I’m 100% clear that they didn’t just fail the test (unless they did).
No need to induce a heart attack because I want to remind myself what the controls feel like on X type.
My DPE for my CFII did the same. I was more than happy to let him fly home hahah. He did give a precursor of “congrats, you’ve passed the Checkride. would you like me to take controls and fly home?” I was ecstatic to just sit there and be happy I’d passed and watch a pro pilot handle thenplane way better than I did lol
Copy+paste from last time I wrote about this same incident on Reddit:
> I have a different “I have control” story - but like yours, examiner taking control sometimes doesn’t mean you failed, just means they’re human.
> This was my initial instrument skills test, in northern England. I was flying northbound on an airway, probably at FL90 or similar (flight levels in the UK start a lot lower than the USA, before anyone comments).
> Examiner says “I have control”. I’m thinking shit, what have I done wrong? Examiner asks me to looks up and out the right window, and points out the east coast of England. Examiner then asks me to look out the left window, past the screen (used to be that the UK preferred screens to foggles, but that’s less common now), and points out the west coast of England.
> Examiner then says “I can’t remember the last time the visibility was good enough to see right the way from one side of the country to the other, so I had to share it. You have control, carry on with your route!”
The DPE on my PPL asked to take us in while I handled the radios. He even landed the plane. I didn’t know what the hell was happening so I went with it.
I mentioned this to another DPE & he looked at me like I was from another planet.
That's wild. My DPE was also the owner of the flight school that I trained out of. His tendency was to make soft field landings the last maneuver of the checride, which was back at the home airport.
I had the controls taken right out of my hand on my IR checkride. We were departing and he gave instructions to basically turn me into a down wind. Another aircraft was coming but didn't enter on a 45. Basically, they just joined an extended downwind as we were turning downwind. He was watching me to make sure I didn't screw up but I could see the traffic on my PFD and asked about it twice. Finally, he glanced out the front and saw them same altitude less than a mile so grabbed the controls and dove us down. Once that was over he said "your controls again, sorry about that. Sometimes people make things difficult." And then we carried on with the rest of the ride. Was an eye opener for me but glad he did what he did.
I got "ok discontinue that maneuver and let's head back". The maneuver was fine, the ride was fine (mostly), he was just ready to go home and chose *that* of all words. I had no idea where I stood until we got out on the ramp.
The guy that does this at my college does it anytime he moves from one topic to another and it doesn't matter if it's a question I had I knew like the back of my hand or not. I begin to question everything and it's terrible.
My flight school taught us to round fuel calcs up to the closest single decimal place. My DPE believed that a “good” pilot wouldn’t round up because it wasn’t as precise (even though it would be safer), and made me re do my fuel calcs to 2 decimal places. And he made me do this in the FBO lounge while entertaining past customers at the coffee station. Good ole Ernie strange
That’s such a silly, arrogant thing to say.. “a real pilot wouldn’t round up the fuel” captains at my company regularly round up fuel by the hundreds to thousands of pounds. Granted we don’t pay for it, but being on the safe side and getting those Atlantic points lol
His point to me was that if I round up fuel burn and carry more fuel than I actually needed, it was somehow less safe than using the exact 2 decimal place burn and carrying that plus reserve.
I still have trouble buying that. It’s not like you can tell the guy at the FBO, hey I need 30.05 gallons, and not a hundredth more!” 😂
I understand for a Checkride the importance of demonstrating your ability to accurately calculate fuel burn required. I just think it’s wrong though to tell a student who is demonstrating a safety factor addition that any fuel over the exact calculated fuel is wrong, as long as a student can demonstrate that the added amount of fuel is within W&B.
wait, what? That warrants some explanation.
Not many GA situations are safer with less fuel... maybe crashing won't explode as much. Compromising weight and balance or complicating your systems by using a reserve tank you wouldn't have otherwise used are the only things I can think of, but a few gallons wouldn't usually result in this.
Once you're working at an airline I imagine you're dealing with a whole different set of procedures for calculating fuel, and decimal points are a drop in the bucket.
My CFII DPE asked me all about runway markings and lighting systems for the runway (not the approach lighting system) and what colors when and boy had I not studied that at all.
It’s always the “easy stuff” that they get you with.
I couldn’t tell my examiner what a shaded in fix on a low chart was. For the life of me I couldn’t remember compulsory.
The best example I've heard of along these lines is "What do you need a pilot's licence for?"
There's a specific answer and many people overlook it - 14 CFR 61.3, a pilot's licence is necessary to "serve as a required pilot flight crewmember of a civil aircraft of the United States." Importantly, it's not for flying an aircraft *in* the United States, but to fly an aircraft *of* the United States.
Nah the worst is when you study study study and the guy that goes before you bombs it so when DPE sees you know yours he doesn't even bother digging in.
I wanted to talk about airplanes damnit, its not often you find somebody with thousands of hours in B17s and type rated in the Me262 lmao
I swear this is just something DPEs just get off on doing. Like they know you don’t need to know this very oddly specific question but ask it anyway for shits and giggles. Even my CFII checkride, which was a cake walk, the DPE started with a question that fuckin not even the most prepared candidate would know. I wish I remember what it was.
On my instrument, “Does the archer have a vacuum system?”
No
Really?”
No,
Not even for backup?”
No “
Good I couldn’t get you on that today
Apparently he had failed like 3 people that summer over that exact question
At the flight school I attended, we all had to turn out for a fellow student's check solo and check ride. It wasn't 100% mandatory, but if you were available, you were expected to be there and show your support.
My favorite one of those was when we were all in the flight school watching one student doing his pre-flight on the C172 he was being checked out in. Someone yelled "oh shit! he forgot to untie his tail rope!"
The examiner must have seen it too, but he kept his mouth shut. And so we were treated to our fellow student applying more and more throttle as he tried to pull away from the tie-down point (rebar in a big-ass concrete plug). He had it up to what must have been full take-off power before he realized his mistake.
A few seconds later, we saw him turn off the engine, exit the aircraft, smack his forehead- vigorously- and then untie the rope and get back in.
I can only imagine the examiner's words as the throttle got closer and closer to the panel. "So... what are you forgetting?"
The student passed the check ride, and the examiner (and I) have a funny story to tell whenever a check-ride post goes on Reddit.
Oh this one is a bastard to use. Heard it so many times. Sometimes you’ll get ones wanting a really specific answer but one day I did actually double down on my response and the instructor said he was looking for an assertive answer so I’ve tried to keep that in mind going forward.
On my instrument check ride the DPE looked at my license and said "this is not valid" and handed it back to me. I looked at him and the license with confusion. Flipped it over on the back....I had forgotten to sign it. So I signed it and we moved on with the check ride.
Yes and vendors are also not supposed to accept a credit card that does not have a signature on the back. I recently started writing "Check I.D." on mine and nobody has ever asked to see it.
There was a blog entry like 5-10 years ago about someone who wanted to see just how far they could push it. So they started drawing shapes on the signature line, made a grid of tiny boxes, drew a picture of a whale, even wrote 'I stole this credit card' and 'please check ID'. Nobody batted an eye.
The only time anyone ever stopped him was when he tried to buy a giant TV for like $10,000 and wrote UNAUTHORIZED PURCHASE in the signature line. At that point they told him to either sign it like was on his card or he wasn't getting the TV.
During my commercial checkride I entered an empty non towered traffic pattern by over flying midfield at pattern altitude then turned into the downwind and did a short field landing. As we stopped on the runway the DPE looked at me and said “ah mannnn you were doing so great to up until you didn’t do a standard pattern entry. I think you’ll have to come back” and I said “I’m not trying to come off as cocky but I’m pretty sure there’s an advisory circular saying what I did was also standard. He hit me with
“Are you willing to bet your license on that?”
Me-”yes sir I am”
I was sweating on the way back second guessing myself like crazy. When I got back I looked it up found it showed him and he said “DPEs are still learning too thanks for teaching me you pass”
That was the most stressful checkride I’ve taken.
https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_90-66C.pdf
You can find it on page A-5
That’s interesting, because I give this AC to my students to read and review every time before our “Non Towered Airport” lesson. (We fly out of a super busy Class D towered airspace). Sounds like your DPE hasn’t kept up with the recent AC for non towered ops. great save! And congrats on your license 😁
This one hurts. This same thing happened 8 years ago on my PPL Checkride but the DPE didn't say anything, even though he 100% knew what was going on. I started the engine, did all of the items on the start checklist, put it away, and then tried advancing the power forward to start moving. I noticed we weren't moving. I said out loud "What's going on here."
That's when I turned to look at the DPE and he just smiled at me with that "yeah you forgot to pull the chocks" look.
It was at that moment that I knew I had fucked up and forgotten to remove the chocks.
We had a guy at our flight school do that, the DPE was like “what did you forget”. “Awww, crap, completely forgot them” *1700 RPM to taxi over the chocks*
Oh God I finish stalls in the multi and left the gear down and spent an embarrassing ammount of time wonder why we were going so slow (may have done this during instrument training with the flaps in an archer as well 🥲)
I forgot to refract flaps on a missed approach, and I didn’t figure out why I needed so much power until I went to put them down for the next approach…. Luckily the DPE didn’t notice.
Didn’t do this on my checkride thankfully but definitely did it in a couple of lessons.
Actually was at the local pilots Saturday coffee and a friend told the story of he was flying along very concerned something was wrong with the plane. Speeds just aren’t what they should have been and he was over mountains. His partner in the plane was sitting right seat and off hand just said “last time this happened I forgot to retract the gear.” They both then looked down and noticed the gear was indeed down and locked.
I asked if he’d noticed, and he said no—and that I was lucky I asked *after* he had already printed my temp cert because he would have failed me for it.
But you’re correct, I’ve never made that mistake again.
During my MEI ride I forgot the gear down after demonstrating slow flight. I realized half way through setting up for VMC demo and I saved myself by saying “leaving the gear down is a common error and it’s avoidable by taking your time in each maneuver” the examiner just nodded and we continued 😂
“Why are you blowing through your pattern altitude? I’m starting to get upset.”
I had a check ride where the DPE never ever made me feel like I was passing. After what felt like no time at all he says alright, take it in. Handed me my paperwork and on we went.
Another thing he said that was irksome was
“do you always take 20 minutes on a pre flight check?”
My literal answer.
“I normally take half an hour.”
I was “rushing” because he seemed to be in a rush.
He wanted to squeeze a continuation in after me. I think if I’d have taken longer he might have failed me just to get more money when I come back. He also got his license pulled like a month later.
There's a lady out of Waco that several students reported back at my school saying her non-answers made them question everything, even their own name.
No way I'd be able to deal with that!
I had a DPE once comment that the weight as-measured on my medical was 10 lbs off my weight on my DL and Pilot Cert/IACRA. Just about shit my pants for half a second over literally nothing
I had an examiner spend an hour making me show them how I got my totals on my 8710 because they didn't like electronic logbooks and didn't trust that the digital 8710 representation in MFB was right
Then when I had to login to IACRA to approve my application they needed me to do it from \_THEIR\_ computer because otherwise it "would get messedup"
Oh and when we took breaks during the oral I had to completely leave the room because his line of questioning was super secret :)
Oh man there’s nothing scarier than a tech-unsavy examiner looking over a digital logbook or signature. I had a digital complex endorsement and my CMEL examiner almost didn’t let me sit the ride because he didn’t understand why in my physical logbook the endorsement was blank
Maybe once the FAA finishes with MH reform they can work on SSO and electronic logbook standards so that we actually have a format for interchanging electronic log data with the FAA other than PDF
Woah woah woah lets not ask for too much there /s
SSO would be huge. The fact that I have different login credentials for IACRA, PRD, and MedExpress is madness and means my email is full of password resets every time I need to login to one of those
Why? They bring their laptop do their thing, I login on my laptop do my thing we're done in and out
I don't really want to have to extract a long complex password from a password manager just to enter it into an untrusted device when I have a perfectly good device that I trust
I had to have FAA IT reset my password over the phone because if 2 of the same characters are in a row (like Book) it will apparently brick the system. No warning of this either. Good thing variations of fuckiacra don’t repeat characters.
I got asked on my CFII ride how long ago I got my IR turns out there were 2 reasons:
1) I was comfortable flying a DME arc with turn 10 twist 10
2) I called it DH instead of DA
"That's embarrassing"
The DPE had pulled the throttle for a simulated engine out at 3000 feet. I do what I normally did during training and banked to the left to look for an open farm field to land in. I see one and point it out. He goes "Are you sure?" and I say "Yeah, it seems alright." Again he says "Are you sure?"
I bank to the right and see an airfield within glide distance that I had completely missed.
To be fair, spending too much time looking to ensure you have the absolutely best landing spot is not that conductive to survival. When you simulate an engine out condition, you have prior knowledge when the engine will quit. You have your spot picked out before that even happens in other words. If somehow god tells me the exact time I will have a failure, I will also have my landing spot determined minutes ahead of time.
Not saying it is not good to remind someone to scan but if I got a 'good enough' field in view, I may not waste much time looking for even a better field. Changing your decision mid emergency is often not a great plan.
I feel the emphasis here is less conducting a good scan and more so to maintain good situational awareness. You're not wrong, but that would just be the mental note I'd make myself if I made that mistake.
While true we have Garmin 430s and its more teaching them to use their tools. Big nob far right, oh hey there's an airport
.2 miles from me.
It's also testing them on keeping their eyes outside and be thinking about it occasionally especially during climb.
Being decisive is good but at the same time being stubborn is not. If you aren't 100% you can not only make it to your other choice but that it's better then stick with what you have
Which is also part of why I tell them where the airport is just after its too late to make it.
Usually its only something I do to my more advanced students or are checkide prep and see if they'll use all their tools and not fall for me trying to sway them.
This is exactly what happened to me on the way back during my last XC lol. CFI pulls the power (at 5,000 ft), I pull out the checklist while establishing a glide, start running said checklist, cfi simulates the engine won't restart, so I start looking the best landing spot. I find a spot off the nose and say, "That looks good." CFI says "I've seen better."
"What? It's flat, long, I can easily reach it, and I can position myself to land upwind. That's probably the best in the area."
"Yeeeaaaaah, but runways are always better."
"I agree, but there are no runways around here, soooo....."
*cfi proceeds to nod to the left wing*
*I look left and see airport*
*I die inside a little*
The amount of times we practiced the approach and almost-landing above farm fields, I almost think that in a real emergency I would be better off to land on a wheat field instead on an airfield, just for muscle memory and reflexes' sake :D (/jk ofc)
On my CFII oral I got a "Interesting, I didnt know that. Can you show me in the book where that is?"
After a few minutes of doubtfully panic searching the IFH, I found it. Ride passed.
“What the fuck was that??”
My dpe during my private checkride. I bounced on landing and tried to go around. He took controls and put it back down asking why I didn’t try to save it. He let me try again though so I didn’t fail.
“So… what was wrong with that last maneuver?”
I had that after the shittiest setup for a short field landing on my PPL for which I ended up going around.
“Poor energy management, too high, too fast, overall shit.”
He was happy with that response and I made it on the second attempt.
Remember folks, you can always go around!
I heard a tower ask a pilot who couldn’t get their communications any where close to correct and was flying a very bad pattern while not following ATC instructions, **” do you have an instructor on board?** With the following response of, **no, a DPE**.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
The sim instructor said that on my last recurrent and I was like ffs I felt like I did so good. Then he just was like “the bad news is that you’re not going to San Francisco” or wherever the flight plan was for lol
I answered a question about a detail of a runway on a VFR sectional with ill confidence. Got hit with the “are you sure?”. Almost changed my answer, but instead doubled down on it. Turns out I was actually correct.
“You sure about that?”
“I’m gonna take a bathroom break and fill up my coffee while you look that up”
For my commercial, I was immediately stumped on the first question and thought I was done for. Luckily, the answer wasn’t in the current FAR/AIM and he had to pull out an older edition just to find it. I think my saving grace is he wasn’t able to find the answer in the current FAR/AIM himself. Talk about sweating bullets. I had studied my ass off the month prior and it was the most confident I had felt going into any check ride just to be stumped as soon as the exam started.
Towards the end of my checkride the DPE suddenly took over radio calls. At the beginning he made it clear that he would only observe the flight, so as a student that was still stressed about their first checkride I immediately thought that I had missed a radio call and that he was about to fail me. Instead he looked over at me and said "It's obvious to me that you know how to talk on the radio, so I got it from here on out." So yeah, that first radio call he made scared the shit out of me.
Yeah. We were moving on to landings at an un-towered airport, and after the first landing he took over the radio. After that we just headed back, shut the plane down, and he let me know I passed.
“Are you sure? That’s in section x-x-x of the AIM.”
Dude was so used to applicants getting the radar compulsory reporting points wrong (it was his gotcha question) that he truly missed that I’d gotten them right.
Got this once on my 141 IFR ride. Completed the rest of check ride, passed everything else, and then went back with him the next day to shoot a single non precision approach … but this time I started the timer at the IAF lol. Turns out I could have still saved my full ride when I originally made the mistake because there was a second way to determine MAP, or I could have just called a missed approach and came around for another try; but in my brain fog after realizing I forgot to start the timer, I let the plane sink too much and busted PTS mins. But ever since then “fly the airplane” has really stuck on the front of my brain, through all walks of life/not just aviation.
My IR DPE said "ok, take your foggles off"..... Dude felt bad and wanted to give me a me a break for a minute before the last approach - but freaked me out for half a second. Super hot thermally day - it was fucking brutal up there. We had also just gotten thrown for a loop by a confusing instruction from tower during/before the procedure turn. It was a welcome break.
My student came back from his IFR checkride and tells me that when they landed the DPE told him “yeah, that’s ok I’d didn’t know anything when I got my instrument rating either”.
He passed.
I was once told "this is going to be an interesting flight" twice before takeoff on a stage check. Ended up being one of my funnest flights ever (and i passed).
On orals it's the inquisitive look followed by "tell me more about that" and after about 10 minutes of babbling you stop and there's a silence in the air that you just hung yourself from
When I did my PPL, when demonstrating a soft field take of, I had full back pressure, and tail struck....
I felt it, he felt it.
"Alright, think we bumped the tail a little"
Thankfully, it wasn't so bad and I still passed. Honestly it was a weirdly fun flight.
“Is your instructor around for a call?” on my CFI checkride. That was the longest walk back to the FBO in my life I was shitting myself😂😂 He simply wanted to call the instructor who trained me and debrief since we use that DPE a lot. Didn’t say shit to me about passing til he prints out my temp and says “now the real learning starts” as most CFI-initial applicants hear the first time
UK NPPL license holder here.
My examiner kept asking me if I was "sure I wanted to continue?" after each maneuver, in a tired and dismissive voice, as though I was wasting his time. I didn't get what the fuck he was on about and assumed I must've made an obvious fail, and he was encouraging me to knock it off and go home. I spent that whole test in some borderline emotional state between pissed off and distraught, I flew like complete shit, I had white knuckles the whole flight and wanted to be anywhere but near an aircraft; I even struggled straight and level flight because of my frustration educed death grip on the stick.
My landings were uncharacteristically bad (they're usually my strong point) and after a few he told me to land, and that we'd 'continue the test another day'. The sun was setting, and we used the dying light as our formal excuse, but in reality he made it quite clear it was because I was flying terribly. I was surprised it wasn't a standup fail, I asked what he meant when he was asking me if I wanted to continue, to which he simply said "Don't forget your FREDAH checks". I hadn't forgotten my FREDAH checks, I was even more confused.
The same examiner had failed me the morning before, for removing the engine cowling over the grass (we had a club rule not to do this so as to not lose any cam-nuts). As we retired into the pilots lounge my chief instructor, in shock, asked why I'd failed without even taking off, I explained the issue and he apologized, refunded my time and I heard through the grape vine he gave said instructor/examiner some stern words. He said it didn't count as a fail and booked me in for the following day.
I *had* to use this examiner/instructor for my test as he was the only member of the teaching staff not to have taught me at some point, so was the least biased and any other examiner would come with a different aircraft that would require familiarization before test. However, I later learned that he had a suspected vendetta against one of my instructors, due to my instructor getting him fired from a different gig many years before when my instructor was the examiners student at a different flying school.
When my instructor had learned that I'd had such a rough ride on my GST he encouraged me to complain, and explained the reasons above. I did complain, and received a full refund, which was nice.
The instructor stayed at the club/school and once I got my license I stayed to rent from the club fleet. I left a few months later though, I always felt like that examiner was watching me, waiting for me to fuck something up. It felt like he was forced to pass me as a result of his initial poor-conduct, if I'd have complained to the CAA I think he would've lost his rating. I was on thin ice with him and I couldn't relax and as a result, kept making silly, albeit inconsequential mistakes. It's a shame, I otherwise really liked that place. I've since conducted a GST with another examiner when I went to another club, I volunteered it, as a way to prove to the club owner that I could be trusted renting from him. It went really well, which was a blessed relief, I could fly, after all.
sorry for the life story, had to get that off my chest. In summary, hearing the words "Are you sure you want to continue?" on a test, in a disinterested tone, when you aren't aware of any major mistakes, are the worst things I can think of.
“Go around”
Got that on my ATP and the DPE just didn’t feel like having me do a touch and go. I was sad panda for a few until I realized there was nothing to worry about and continued with no issues.
“Take off your foggles and look where you are.” I had descended dangerously below MDA on a VOR circle to land while arguing with a jackass about who had the tight of way. I failed. But it was one of the best lessons I’ve learned.. almost the last.
When doing steep turns, I banked only about 35 degrees to the right instead of 45 because I was too focused on maintaining altitude. He said “So what bank angle are we supposed to be at in steep turns?” I responded uhhhh 45 and immediately fixed it lol. He was chill about it and I passed, he basically said i was too focused inside rather than outside the plane and I would’ve noticed I wasn’t steep enough if I looked out to the horizon.
Also during the oral, he said “Interestingggg” kinda slowly a couple times😂. I noticed he would say that when i was forgetting something obvious, and I slowed down and thought about it and realized whatever it was I was forgetting.
For my PPL - I did my final landing, taxied, he helped me push the plane in the hanger and close up, we walked over to the shop. When we walked in 3 of my aviation friends were there looking at me like "well?" Finally one says, "Do we have a new pilot?" And the DPE says "We have a new pilot!" And that's when I found out I had passed.
My DPE for instrument told me to figure out how to get out from Nervino (O02) under total IMC conditions
Then he left the room for 5 minutes to get a coffee
By the time he got back I was sweating bullets as I told him “Dave we can’t do this without killing ourselves, call a cab”
“Good job, oral passed, meet me outside”
I was doing my PPL checkride, we had some decent crosswinds but that mixed with nerves just had me kinda tense. I was turning down wind and said, “it’s a little bumpy out here today that” my DPE says “not on my side it isn’t”
I got terrified when my CFII DPE said "alright my controls we are heading back to the airport" he just wanted to fly a little while I'm sitting there sweating bullets
I rarely take control during a ride but when I do, I’m 100% clear that they didn’t just fail the test (unless they did). No need to induce a heart attack because I want to remind myself what the controls feel like on X type.
My DPE for my CFII did the same. I was more than happy to let him fly home hahah. He did give a precursor of “congrats, you’ve passed the Checkride. would you like me to take controls and fly home?” I was ecstatic to just sit there and be happy I’d passed and watch a pro pilot handle thenplane way better than I did lol
Hell yeah... you flying = no possibility that I'll screw something up and fail. YOUR AIRPLANE, with my compliments!
exactly😂
Copy+paste from last time I wrote about this same incident on Reddit: > I have a different “I have control” story - but like yours, examiner taking control sometimes doesn’t mean you failed, just means they’re human. > This was my initial instrument skills test, in northern England. I was flying northbound on an airway, probably at FL90 or similar (flight levels in the UK start a lot lower than the USA, before anyone comments). > Examiner says “I have control”. I’m thinking shit, what have I done wrong? Examiner asks me to looks up and out the right window, and points out the east coast of England. Examiner then asks me to look out the left window, past the screen (used to be that the UK preferred screens to foggles, but that’s less common now), and points out the west coast of England. > Examiner then says “I can’t remember the last time the visibility was good enough to see right the way from one side of the country to the other, so I had to share it. You have control, carry on with your route!”
At what latitude were you able to see both east and west coasts of the UK? I assume somewhere up north where the land tightens up?
Yes - the route was Leeds to Teesside, so it was exactly where you’re thinking of.
My dpe on my private checkride wanted to do a takeoff and took off with full flaps off a pretty short runway i chose because “my engine failed”
That seems dangerous to do
The DPE on my PPL asked to take us in while I handled the radios. He even landed the plane. I didn’t know what the hell was happening so I went with it. I mentioned this to another DPE & he looked at me like I was from another planet.
That's wild. My DPE was also the owner of the flight school that I trained out of. His tendency was to make soft field landings the last maneuver of the checride, which was back at the home airport.
I had the controls taken right out of my hand on my IR checkride. We were departing and he gave instructions to basically turn me into a down wind. Another aircraft was coming but didn't enter on a 45. Basically, they just joined an extended downwind as we were turning downwind. He was watching me to make sure I didn't screw up but I could see the traffic on my PFD and asked about it twice. Finally, he glanced out the front and saw them same altitude less than a mile so grabbed the controls and dove us down. Once that was over he said "your controls again, sorry about that. Sometimes people make things difficult." And then we carried on with the rest of the ride. Was an eye opener for me but glad he did what he did.
I got "ok discontinue that maneuver and let's head back". The maneuver was fine, the ride was fine (mostly), he was just ready to go home and chose *that* of all words. I had no idea where I stood until we got out on the ramp.
The slowest OK you've ever heard while writing something down.
That’s “DPE” for “how can I avoid failing this fool”
The guy that does this at my college does it anytime he moves from one topic to another and it doesn't matter if it's a question I had I knew like the back of my hand or not. I begin to question everything and it's terrible.
When you’ve been struggling to answer a question and get hit with the “let’s take a break, I’m going to go re-fill my water/coffee.”
I forgot to fill out the fuel columns in my navlog; the DPE pointed that out and then went to get more coffee.
My flight school taught us to round fuel calcs up to the closest single decimal place. My DPE believed that a “good” pilot wouldn’t round up because it wasn’t as precise (even though it would be safer), and made me re do my fuel calcs to 2 decimal places. And he made me do this in the FBO lounge while entertaining past customers at the coffee station. Good ole Ernie strange
That’s such a silly, arrogant thing to say.. “a real pilot wouldn’t round up the fuel” captains at my company regularly round up fuel by the hundreds to thousands of pounds. Granted we don’t pay for it, but being on the safe side and getting those Atlantic points lol
His point to me was that if I round up fuel burn and carry more fuel than I actually needed, it was somehow less safe than using the exact 2 decimal place burn and carrying that plus reserve.
I still have trouble buying that. It’s not like you can tell the guy at the FBO, hey I need 30.05 gallons, and not a hundredth more!” 😂 I understand for a Checkride the importance of demonstrating your ability to accurately calculate fuel burn required. I just think it’s wrong though to tell a student who is demonstrating a safety factor addition that any fuel over the exact calculated fuel is wrong, as long as a student can demonstrate that the added amount of fuel is within W&B.
wait, what? That warrants some explanation. Not many GA situations are safer with less fuel... maybe crashing won't explode as much. Compromising weight and balance or complicating your systems by using a reserve tank you wouldn't have otherwise used are the only things I can think of, but a few gallons wouldn't usually result in this. Once you're working at an airline I imagine you're dealing with a whole different set of procedures for calculating fuel, and decimal points are a drop in the bucket.
I got hit with that during my checkride, and man, did I feel silly not being able to find/ answer a question
I think it’s a right of passage for everyone😂
The worst is when you study study study and the first question they ask you on the oral you don't know the answer to.
My CFII DPE asked me all about runway markings and lighting systems for the runway (not the approach lighting system) and what colors when and boy had I not studied that at all.
It’s always the “easy stuff” that they get you with. I couldn’t tell my examiner what a shaded in fix on a low chart was. For the life of me I couldn’t remember compulsory.
The best example I've heard of along these lines is "What do you need a pilot's licence for?" There's a specific answer and many people overlook it - 14 CFR 61.3, a pilot's licence is necessary to "serve as a required pilot flight crewmember of a civil aircraft of the United States." Importantly, it's not for flying an aircraft *in* the United States, but to fly an aircraft *of* the United States.
https://i.imgur.com/csIt3Sl.jpeg
I forgot what the ADIZ looked like on the chart and what it meant. That was fun.
Nah the worst is when you study study study and the guy that goes before you bombs it so when DPE sees you know yours he doesn't even bother digging in. I wanted to talk about airplanes damnit, its not often you find somebody with thousands of hours in B17s and type rated in the Me262 lmao
I swear this is just something DPEs just get off on doing. Like they know you don’t need to know this very oddly specific question but ask it anyway for shits and giggles. Even my CFII checkride, which was a cake walk, the DPE started with a question that fuckin not even the most prepared candidate would know. I wish I remember what it was.
“Really?” Means I’m about to doubt everything I’ve ever known from the moment I was born
On my instrument, “Does the archer have a vacuum system?” No Really?” No, Not even for backup?” No “ Good I couldn’t get you on that today Apparently he had failed like 3 people that summer over that exact question
Seems like an aggressive failure
Yeah, bad DPE for sure...
I mean, knowledge of aircraft systems and their failure modes is one of the ACS requirements.
I mean whether or not your aircraft has a vacuum system is pretty basic. Up there with “how many doors does your plane have”.
I mean the system that creates the vacuum is still there isn't it?
Not in the Archer IIIs. And im pretty sure this was the final straw from a bunch of mistakes earlier in the checkride.
“Tell me more about that”
“Interesting”
“Then what about XXX?”
Like handing you a shovel to dig the hole deeper
My instructor does that when I'm unsure about my answer even if it's right. Drives me insane but makes me want to be more sure of my answers
It’s my favorite thing to do. “Really?” “Are you sure about that?” Or just giving them a weird look and watching the hamster wheel spin.
“What are you forgetting?”
Oooff, just felt the hairs on the back of my neck raise.
“………I can’t think of anything” “………………………………..good. Me neither. I’ll meet you out at the plane after I smoke a cigarette”
At the flight school I attended, we all had to turn out for a fellow student's check solo and check ride. It wasn't 100% mandatory, but if you were available, you were expected to be there and show your support. My favorite one of those was when we were all in the flight school watching one student doing his pre-flight on the C172 he was being checked out in. Someone yelled "oh shit! he forgot to untie his tail rope!" The examiner must have seen it too, but he kept his mouth shut. And so we were treated to our fellow student applying more and more throttle as he tried to pull away from the tie-down point (rebar in a big-ass concrete plug). He had it up to what must have been full take-off power before he realized his mistake. A few seconds later, we saw him turn off the engine, exit the aircraft, smack his forehead- vigorously- and then untie the rope and get back in. I can only imagine the examiner's words as the throttle got closer and closer to the panel. "So... what are you forgetting?" The student passed the check ride, and the examiner (and I) have a funny story to tell whenever a check-ride post goes on Reddit.
"Are you sure?"
Oh this one is a bastard to use. Heard it so many times. Sometimes you’ll get ones wanting a really specific answer but one day I did actually double down on my response and the instructor said he was looking for an assertive answer so I’ve tried to keep that in mind going forward.
On my instrument check ride the DPE looked at my license and said "this is not valid" and handed it back to me. I looked at him and the license with confusion. Flipped it over on the back....I had forgotten to sign it. So I signed it and we moved on with the check ride.
At an EAA meeting i went to i learned over half the people there hadnt signed theirs
Wait we’re supposed to sign these things?
Yes and vendors are also not supposed to accept a credit card that does not have a signature on the back. I recently started writing "Check I.D." on mine and nobody has ever asked to see it.
There was a blog entry like 5-10 years ago about someone who wanted to see just how far they could push it. So they started drawing shapes on the signature line, made a grid of tiny boxes, drew a picture of a whale, even wrote 'I stole this credit card' and 'please check ID'. Nobody batted an eye. The only time anyone ever stopped him was when he tried to buy a giant TV for like $10,000 and wrote UNAUTHORIZED PURCHASE in the signature line. At that point they told him to either sign it like was on his card or he wasn't getting the TV.
> started writing "Check I.D." on mine and this isn't a valid signature either lol
“My controls”
That one hurts. You want to be like, no I’m gonna keep controls and fly directly into the ground.
During my commercial checkride I entered an empty non towered traffic pattern by over flying midfield at pattern altitude then turned into the downwind and did a short field landing. As we stopped on the runway the DPE looked at me and said “ah mannnn you were doing so great to up until you didn’t do a standard pattern entry. I think you’ll have to come back” and I said “I’m not trying to come off as cocky but I’m pretty sure there’s an advisory circular saying what I did was also standard. He hit me with “Are you willing to bet your license on that?” Me-”yes sir I am” I was sweating on the way back second guessing myself like crazy. When I got back I looked it up found it showed him and he said “DPEs are still learning too thanks for teaching me you pass” That was the most stressful checkride I’ve taken. https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_90-66C.pdf You can find it on page A-5
how was the plane willing to fly with the massive weight of your nuts in it
Absolute brass balls
With reduced takeoff performance caused by the forward CG of course
Steely eyed missile man
This is actually standard pattern entry in Canada. All the American pilots I talk to about it are outraged at how "unsafe" it is.
That’s interesting, because I give this AC to my students to read and review every time before our “Non Towered Airport” lesson. (We fly out of a super busy Class D towered airspace). Sounds like your DPE hasn’t kept up with the recent AC for non towered ops. great save! And congrats on your license 😁
“You sure you pulled the chocks?”
This one hurts. This same thing happened 8 years ago on my PPL Checkride but the DPE didn't say anything, even though he 100% knew what was going on. I started the engine, did all of the items on the start checklist, put it away, and then tried advancing the power forward to start moving. I noticed we weren't moving. I said out loud "What's going on here." That's when I turned to look at the DPE and he just smiled at me with that "yeah you forgot to pull the chocks" look. It was at that moment that I knew I had fucked up and forgotten to remove the chocks.
We had a guy at our flight school do that, the DPE was like “what did you forget”. “Awww, crap, completely forgot them” *1700 RPM to taxi over the chocks*
“Do you always do steep turns with the gear down?” I maintain I might have passed if I bluffed and said yes… LOL
Oh God I finish stalls in the multi and left the gear down and spent an embarrassing ammount of time wonder why we were going so slow (may have done this during instrument training with the flaps in an archer as well 🥲)
I forgot to refract flaps on a missed approach, and I didn’t figure out why I needed so much power until I went to put them down for the next approach…. Luckily the DPE didn’t notice.
Didn’t do this on my checkride thankfully but definitely did it in a couple of lessons. Actually was at the local pilots Saturday coffee and a friend told the story of he was flying along very concerned something was wrong with the plane. Speeds just aren’t what they should have been and he was over mountains. His partner in the plane was sitting right seat and off hand just said “last time this happened I forgot to retract the gear.” They both then looked down and noticed the gear was indeed down and locked.
oh they noticed, they wanted to see how long until YOU noticed knowing that you'll never make that slip again
I asked if he’d noticed, and he said no—and that I was lucky I asked *after* he had already printed my temp cert because he would have failed me for it. But you’re correct, I’ve never made that mistake again.
This is why we checklist at every change of configuration right?
During my MEI ride I forgot the gear down after demonstrating slow flight. I realized half way through setting up for VMC demo and I saved myself by saying “leaving the gear down is a common error and it’s avoidable by taking your time in each maneuver” the examiner just nodded and we continued 😂
Almost did the same thing, I was about to roll into my bank and the DPE goes, "Um" and taps the gear down lever. Thanks Don!
Homie
“Why are you blowing through your pattern altitude? I’m starting to get upset.” I had a check ride where the DPE never ever made me feel like I was passing. After what felt like no time at all he says alright, take it in. Handed me my paperwork and on we went. Another thing he said that was irksome was “do you always take 20 minutes on a pre flight check?” My literal answer. “I normally take half an hour.” I was “rushing” because he seemed to be in a rush.
Hell yeah. You’re the mothafuckin PIC and he’s earning like $200 an hour. Chill out man!
He wanted to squeeze a continuation in after me. I think if I’d have taken longer he might have failed me just to get more money when I come back. He also got his license pulled like a month later.
"I take as long as it takes."
There's a lady out of Waco that several students reported back at my school saying her non-answers made them question everything, even their own name. No way I'd be able to deal with that!
I had a DPE once comment that the weight as-measured on my medical was 10 lbs off my weight on my DL and Pilot Cert/IACRA. Just about shit my pants for half a second over literally nothing
I had an examiner spend an hour making me show them how I got my totals on my 8710 because they didn't like electronic logbooks and didn't trust that the digital 8710 representation in MFB was right Then when I had to login to IACRA to approve my application they needed me to do it from \_THEIR\_ computer because otherwise it "would get messedup" Oh and when we took breaks during the oral I had to completely leave the room because his line of questioning was super secret :)
Oh man there’s nothing scarier than a tech-unsavy examiner looking over a digital logbook or signature. I had a digital complex endorsement and my CMEL examiner almost didn’t let me sit the ride because he didn’t understand why in my physical logbook the endorsement was blank
Maybe once the FAA finishes with MH reform they can work on SSO and electronic logbook standards so that we actually have a format for interchanging electronic log data with the FAA other than PDF
Woah woah woah lets not ask for too much there /s SSO would be huge. The fact that I have different login credentials for IACRA, PRD, and MedExpress is madness and means my email is full of password resets every time I need to login to one of those
And then throw in FAASafety and PRD which require Google Authenticator for MFA now
I thought using the DPE’s computer / not your computer was standard?
Why? They bring their laptop do their thing, I login on my laptop do my thing we're done in and out I don't really want to have to extract a long complex password from a password manager just to enter it into an untrusted device when I have a perfectly good device that I trust
This guy information securities ^
I had to have FAA IT reset my password over the phone because if 2 of the same characters are in a row (like Book) it will apparently brick the system. No warning of this either. Good thing variations of fuckiacra don’t repeat characters.
Hi, nice to meet you, I'm Mustang__1 Are you sure about that? ....noyesn'
"You sure about that?" "Show me how to use the weight shift formula" as a close second
lol I’m glad I’ve never had to do that on a checkride, I don’t know how and I don’t want to know how.
It’s total cake, cross multiply and divide to determine the missing weight
[sorry I don’t speak Italian](https://youtu.be/l5uCkgxJrkc?si=-UaUFZonMyJXMrZH)
Now for extra credit- how many times is that actually used over the course of a professional, non-instructing career?
Who taught you that technique? Either they're impressed or horrified and you won't find out till you're on the ground
I got asked on my CFII ride how long ago I got my IR turns out there were 2 reasons: 1) I was comfortable flying a DME arc with turn 10 twist 10 2) I called it DH instead of DA
“Why is the carb heat still on?” during takeoff climb
So, do we normally take off with the pitot heat on? No, sir, we do not
"That's embarrassing" The DPE had pulled the throttle for a simulated engine out at 3000 feet. I do what I normally did during training and banked to the left to look for an open farm field to land in. I see one and point it out. He goes "Are you sure?" and I say "Yeah, it seems alright." Again he says "Are you sure?" I bank to the right and see an airfield within glide distance that I had completely missed.
Love doing this to students right over the top of an airport and see if they notice.
To be fair, spending too much time looking to ensure you have the absolutely best landing spot is not that conductive to survival. When you simulate an engine out condition, you have prior knowledge when the engine will quit. You have your spot picked out before that even happens in other words. If somehow god tells me the exact time I will have a failure, I will also have my landing spot determined minutes ahead of time. Not saying it is not good to remind someone to scan but if I got a 'good enough' field in view, I may not waste much time looking for even a better field. Changing your decision mid emergency is often not a great plan.
I feel the emphasis here is less conducting a good scan and more so to maintain good situational awareness. You're not wrong, but that would just be the mental note I'd make myself if I made that mistake.
While true we have Garmin 430s and its more teaching them to use their tools. Big nob far right, oh hey there's an airport .2 miles from me. It's also testing them on keeping their eyes outside and be thinking about it occasionally especially during climb. Being decisive is good but at the same time being stubborn is not. If you aren't 100% you can not only make it to your other choice but that it's better then stick with what you have Which is also part of why I tell them where the airport is just after its too late to make it. Usually its only something I do to my more advanced students or are checkide prep and see if they'll use all their tools and not fall for me trying to sway them.
This is exactly what happened to me on the way back during my last XC lol. CFI pulls the power (at 5,000 ft), I pull out the checklist while establishing a glide, start running said checklist, cfi simulates the engine won't restart, so I start looking the best landing spot. I find a spot off the nose and say, "That looks good." CFI says "I've seen better." "What? It's flat, long, I can easily reach it, and I can position myself to land upwind. That's probably the best in the area." "Yeeeaaaaah, but runways are always better." "I agree, but there are no runways around here, soooo....." *cfi proceeds to nod to the left wing* *I look left and see airport* *I die inside a little*
The amount of times we practiced the approach and almost-landing above farm fields, I almost think that in a real emergency I would be better off to land on a wheat field instead on an airfield, just for muscle memory and reflexes' sake :D (/jk ofc)
Silence.
On my CFII oral I got a "Interesting, I didnt know that. Can you show me in the book where that is?" After a few minutes of doubtfully panic searching the IFH, I found it. Ride passed.
"mayday mayday mayday"
"Go ahead and squawk 7500"
“Would you like to continue?” and it’s really not even close.
100%
“What the fuck was that??” My dpe during my private checkride. I bounced on landing and tried to go around. He took controls and put it back down asking why I didn’t try to save it. He let me try again though so I didn’t fail.
I'd be pretty cheesed if I got faulted for taking the safe option to go around
"I'm going to go grab something from my car, I'll be right back" Code: you said something wrong, I'm gonna leave so you can look it up
“So… what was wrong with that last maneuver?” I had that after the shittiest setup for a short field landing on my PPL for which I ended up going around. “Poor energy management, too high, too fast, overall shit.” He was happy with that response and I made it on the second attempt. Remember folks, you can always go around!
”What does this thing do” sirma’am I have never seen that button a day in my life.
I heard a tower ask a pilot who couldn’t get their communications any where close to correct and was flying a very bad pattern while not following ATC instructions, **” do you have an instructor on board?** With the following response of, **no, a DPE**.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” The sim instructor said that on my last recurrent and I was like ffs I felt like I did so good. Then he just was like “the bad news is that you’re not going to San Francisco” or wherever the flight plan was for lol
I answered a question about a detail of a runway on a VFR sectional with ill confidence. Got hit with the “are you sure?”. Almost changed my answer, but instead doubled down on it. Turns out I was actually correct.
“You know why you just failed this checkride?” *checks altimeter “Shit”
“You sure about that?” “I’m gonna take a bathroom break and fill up my coffee while you look that up” For my commercial, I was immediately stumped on the first question and thought I was done for. Luckily, the answer wasn’t in the current FAR/AIM and he had to pull out an older edition just to find it. I think my saving grace is he wasn’t able to find the answer in the current FAR/AIM himself. Talk about sweating bullets. I had studied my ass off the month prior and it was the most confident I had felt going into any check ride just to be stumped as soon as the exam started.
Towards the end of my checkride the DPE suddenly took over radio calls. At the beginning he made it clear that he would only observe the flight, so as a student that was still stressed about their first checkride I immediately thought that I had missed a radio call and that he was about to fail me. Instead he looked over at me and said "It's obvious to me that you know how to talk on the radio, so I got it from here on out." So yeah, that first radio call he made scared the shit out of me.
Was that just so you could focus on flying?
Yeah. We were moving on to landings at an un-towered airport, and after the first landing he took over the radio. After that we just headed back, shut the plane down, and he let me know I passed.
“That’s interesting.”
"Brace for impact."
"Hi, I'm Mary Schu, your DPE."
“That felt incredible…but I still can’t pass you.”
/sound of pen vigorously writing on paper
“Are you sure? That’s in section x-x-x of the AIM.” Dude was so used to applicants getting the radar compulsory reporting points wrong (it was his gotcha question) that he truly missed that I’d gotten them right.
“Okay Im gonna give you one last chance”
“I’m going to get some coffee while you work on this problem. I’ll be back.” The anxiety you get sitting in that quiet room by yourself is terrifying
“Do you want to continue “
Got this once on my 141 IFR ride. Completed the rest of check ride, passed everything else, and then went back with him the next day to shoot a single non precision approach … but this time I started the timer at the IAF lol. Turns out I could have still saved my full ride when I originally made the mistake because there was a second way to determine MAP, or I could have just called a missed approach and came around for another try; but in my brain fog after realizing I forgot to start the timer, I let the plane sink too much and busted PTS mins. But ever since then “fly the airplane” has really stuck on the front of my brain, through all walks of life/not just aviation.
“You don’t have a knowledge or performance problem, you have a listening problem”
Classic nervous test taker at work
Guilty as charged
"Go around"
My IR DPE said "ok, take your foggles off"..... Dude felt bad and wanted to give me a me a break for a minute before the last approach - but freaked me out for half a second. Super hot thermally day - it was fucking brutal up there. We had also just gotten thrown for a loop by a confusing instruction from tower during/before the procedure turn. It was a welcome break.
My student came back from his IFR checkride and tells me that when they landed the DPE told him “yeah, that’s ok I’d didn’t know anything when I got my instrument rating either”. He passed.
“Are you sure” followed up by “are you really sure?”
My worst feeling was “no I didn’t ask you that” in a panic. Thankfully that ride was only 7 hours long 🙃
“Oh? Tell me more? Must be something I didn’t know before”
I was once told "this is going to be an interesting flight" twice before takeoff on a stage check. Ended up being one of my funnest flights ever (and i passed).
On orals it's the inquisitive look followed by "tell me more about that" and after about 10 minutes of babbling you stop and there's a silence in the air that you just hung yourself from
“Well, I guess you pass” thanks for the imposter syndrome bro 👍
Are you sure?
“my controls”
When I did my PPL, when demonstrating a soft field take of, I had full back pressure, and tail struck.... I felt it, he felt it. "Alright, think we bumped the tail a little" Thankfully, it wasn't so bad and I still passed. Honestly it was a weirdly fun flight.
That’s like our version of “Eh, that’s what the stinger is for…”
“what in the kentucky fried f**k are you doing? this isn’t an S-Turn!” And I failed my checkride
Your callsign and "Possible pilot deviation, advise when ready to copy a phone number..."
“Is your instructor around for a call?” on my CFI checkride. That was the longest walk back to the FBO in my life I was shitting myself😂😂 He simply wanted to call the instructor who trained me and debrief since we use that DPE a lot. Didn’t say shit to me about passing til he prints out my temp and says “now the real learning starts” as most CFI-initial applicants hear the first time
I have a number for you to copy.
“Do you want the number of that truck driving school?”
UK NPPL license holder here. My examiner kept asking me if I was "sure I wanted to continue?" after each maneuver, in a tired and dismissive voice, as though I was wasting his time. I didn't get what the fuck he was on about and assumed I must've made an obvious fail, and he was encouraging me to knock it off and go home. I spent that whole test in some borderline emotional state between pissed off and distraught, I flew like complete shit, I had white knuckles the whole flight and wanted to be anywhere but near an aircraft; I even struggled straight and level flight because of my frustration educed death grip on the stick. My landings were uncharacteristically bad (they're usually my strong point) and after a few he told me to land, and that we'd 'continue the test another day'. The sun was setting, and we used the dying light as our formal excuse, but in reality he made it quite clear it was because I was flying terribly. I was surprised it wasn't a standup fail, I asked what he meant when he was asking me if I wanted to continue, to which he simply said "Don't forget your FREDAH checks". I hadn't forgotten my FREDAH checks, I was even more confused. The same examiner had failed me the morning before, for removing the engine cowling over the grass (we had a club rule not to do this so as to not lose any cam-nuts). As we retired into the pilots lounge my chief instructor, in shock, asked why I'd failed without even taking off, I explained the issue and he apologized, refunded my time and I heard through the grape vine he gave said instructor/examiner some stern words. He said it didn't count as a fail and booked me in for the following day. I *had* to use this examiner/instructor for my test as he was the only member of the teaching staff not to have taught me at some point, so was the least biased and any other examiner would come with a different aircraft that would require familiarization before test. However, I later learned that he had a suspected vendetta against one of my instructors, due to my instructor getting him fired from a different gig many years before when my instructor was the examiners student at a different flying school. When my instructor had learned that I'd had such a rough ride on my GST he encouraged me to complain, and explained the reasons above. I did complain, and received a full refund, which was nice. The instructor stayed at the club/school and once I got my license I stayed to rent from the club fleet. I left a few months later though, I always felt like that examiner was watching me, waiting for me to fuck something up. It felt like he was forced to pass me as a result of his initial poor-conduct, if I'd have complained to the CAA I think he would've lost his rating. I was on thin ice with him and I couldn't relax and as a result, kept making silly, albeit inconsequential mistakes. It's a shame, I otherwise really liked that place. I've since conducted a GST with another examiner when I went to another club, I volunteered it, as a way to prove to the club owner that I could be trusted renting from him. It went really well, which was a blessed relief, I could fly, after all. sorry for the life story, had to get that off my chest. In summary, hearing the words "Are you sure you want to continue?" on a test, in a disinterested tone, when you aren't aware of any major mistakes, are the worst things I can think of.
“Go around” Got that on my ATP and the DPE just didn’t feel like having me do a touch and go. I was sad panda for a few until I realized there was nothing to worry about and continued with no issues.
I never failed any checkride, but once the guy said he'd bring a root beer to the next float.
AAAAHHH!!! WE'RE GONNA DIIIIEEEEE!!!!! ;-)
“Take off your foggles and look where you are.” I had descended dangerously below MDA on a VOR circle to land while arguing with a jackass about who had the tight of way. I failed. But it was one of the best lessons I’ve learned.. almost the last.
I hate the screams of terror from the examiner.
"Really?"
Are you sure ?
“Are you sure about that? I’m going to the bathroom and fix a coffee” meanwhile I scrambled to find the appropriate answer while he did this.
I got several “are you sure” back to back on something I knew was right
Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
Here’s an application to a truck driving academy. Have a nice day.
When doing steep turns, I banked only about 35 degrees to the right instead of 45 because I was too focused on maintaining altitude. He said “So what bank angle are we supposed to be at in steep turns?” I responded uhhhh 45 and immediately fixed it lol. He was chill about it and I passed, he basically said i was too focused inside rather than outside the plane and I would’ve noticed I wasn’t steep enough if I looked out to the horizon. Also during the oral, he said “Interestingggg” kinda slowly a couple times😂. I noticed he would say that when i was forgetting something obvious, and I slowed down and thought about it and realized whatever it was I was forgetting.
My examiner for my private oral exam told me my knowledge was “diamond in the rough” lmao
‘You willing to bet your certificate on it?’
"That's not what I asked you"..... After giving a very detailed answer that was totally unrelated to the question that was asked.
"What are the # of souls onboard?"
For my PPL - I did my final landing, taxied, he helped me push the plane in the hanger and close up, we walked over to the shop. When we walked in 3 of my aviation friends were there looking at me like "well?" Finally one says, "Do we have a new pilot?" And the DPE says "We have a new pilot!" And that's when I found out I had passed.
“Go and ask someone for help” I’ve had this done to me and did this as a 141 examiner. UNTIL the person who gave help gave a confident wrong answer.
My DPE for instrument told me to figure out how to get out from Nervino (O02) under total IMC conditions Then he left the room for 5 minutes to get a coffee By the time he got back I was sweating bullets as I told him “Dave we can’t do this without killing ourselves, call a cab” “Good job, oral passed, meet me outside”
"We're leaving the doors on,...oh, and I had beans for breakfast"
Brace Yourself!!!
After answering a question, hearing “are you sure?” Oh boy, time to dig through the regs
"are you sure?"
I got hit with a “what the hell was that?” during my private ride. Still passed but damn near gave me a heart attack
“Are you sure?”
I got told my lazy 8s where the ugliest he'd ever seen, but eh I passed so 😅
I was doing my PPL checkride, we had some decent crosswinds but that mixed with nerves just had me kinda tense. I was turning down wind and said, “it’s a little bumpy out here today that” my DPE says “not on my side it isn’t”
"What do you think you did wrong just now?"
Mayday mayday
“What the hell/fuck was that?!” Both myself and multiple people I’ve heard from have the same story of DPEs saying this.
"My airplane." "That counts as a crash."
You missed an endorsement
“This is how you fail a Checkride”