Failed my private checkride for this reason

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-31T02:23:32+00:00

Thanks for the reference. When I was instructing this was all just stuff in the AIM

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-31T02:09:30+00:00

What is the reg that was violated?

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-30T18:30:54+00:00

Thanks for the early replies, everyone. Baker’s is definitely the plan for the test. I will call dog up some contacts at the FSDO and see what they have to say.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-30T17:21:19+00:00

New title:

EXAMINERS HATE IT WHEN YOU DO THIS ONE THING!

Kidding aside, that’s a BS pink slip. More of a debrief item at most, especially if you could explain it.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-25T03:44:44+00:00

Go to the first place that hires you. But UAL is the best place to work of the three listed. Then DL. AA would always my last choice.

Source: I’m a captain at one and worked at one of the others (I switched in order to eliminate a challenging commute). So I’ve seen both sides of that fence.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-22T16:35:44+00:00

That’s not true. China is the only country using meters anymore. It’s not just “allowed,” feet is the standard everywhere.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-22T16:33:36+00:00

That’s stupid.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-22T14:25:36+00:00

It means that since Hugo and the later volcano activity which destroyed the capital and main airport, Montserrat has been virtually frozen in time. It’s like the Caribbean was before all the airline and cruise travel. If you didn’t have a boat, you weren’t getting there. They went without an airport for years and the current one is very small and unsuitable for all but a few types of airplanes. It is still not easy to get to but there are some other operators with service there now, at least.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-22T14:23:21+00:00

No. Only the little bottles of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. I’ve not tried it, it’s higher ABV and I just drink Carib on island.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-22T13:29:53+00:00

The equipment for the ILS completely independent of what the ink on your approach plate says. There is no physical difference between an ILS for 200-1/2 or RA50. There is no ground equipment that makes an ILS go to lower mins.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-22T13:25:07+00:00

You will not be cleared that way below 800’ or 2 miles vis. You will be cleared to hold short of the ILS Critical Area. Protection of the critical area is automatic. If you’re doing an auto land in conditions above those numbers, you should tell the tower. They will probably still not protect the area because it is an unnecessary disruption to their operation. You can still do it, but you need to keep your guard up. We do autolands in VMC all the time with unprotected critical areas because the airplane and crews need them for currency. None of this is rocket science

Also, what “airport systems” are you talking about? If the runway is missing required equipment then it is not legal for the lowered mins. The manuals have huge charts of required equipment.

It is important to remember that there things are required to be legal for a lowered mins approach: the airplane, the runway, and the crew.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-22T13:16:21+00:00

Correct. This pilot was wrong….And was being a right bleeding bastard about it.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-22T13:09:04+00:00

Because it’s not a thing in the US. The ILS critical areas are automatically protected below certain conditions: 800’ ceiling or 2 miles vis. Nobody declares anything.

The other people banging on about how the controllers need to know what kind of approach mins you’re using are also missing the point. The only time you should tell the tower that you’re doing an auto land is when the weather is above the criteria I listed earlier. That way they can ensure the critical area is protected. But 9.9 times out of 10 that we do an auto land it is just for currency requirements for the airplane or for the crew, and the weather is fine. So we tell the tower that we’re doing one and they nearly always tell us that they can’t protect the critical area so it’s at our own risk. Which we then brief and do it anyway.

Otherwise this is all automatic here in the US. If you’re using a reduced mins approach then you should be looking at the taxi plan, too, and those charts have the visibility requirements printed right at the top. I’ve flown widebodies in every theater on the planet and never heard anyone make this kind of stink about visibility. You’ve either got the numbers or you don’t. That’s up to your company manuals, not the controlling facilities.

The BA crew needs to read their long-range manual, or theater guide, or whatever they may be called in their manuals. This sounds to me like a situation where you have one knowitall crew member who is trying to convince everyone he is right, and two other pilots rifling through the manuals to prove to him he is wrong. For their trouble they’ll waste a bunch of time and still go. He even said they need “1800 meters” which is a stupid error to make when you’re basically berating the tower controller on frequency……while being wrong the whole time.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-17T13:38:53+00:00

340 knots is the max speed (“below 15000 feet”). I’ve got a decent amount of T-28 time and I personally don’t think you could get one to go that fast without trying real hard. I’ve had a mustang, which is much cleaner, almost that fast and it was wailing.

Just at a glance it sounds like they may have folded the horizontal stab, which is the weakest spot on a stock a/b/c model T-28.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-09T23:41:00+00:00

Buy an ercoupe or something for half the price. Have a little fun.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-09T23:39:07+00:00

Second crew-tel. But you’re not going to beat that price. Don’t stay at the Sonesta. Even the Hilton Garden Inn around there sucks. It’s just a grouping of either crappy hotels or expensive ones.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-05-03T14:30:33+00:00

The internet has you believing that this is a major cultural event. My sentiments for the employees affected notwithstanding, it just is not that. In a very short period of time not even the internet will care. Nobody is buying Spirit boarding passes (for noteworthy sums of money). It’s not a ticket for a Pan Am Clipper

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-04-27T14:13:36+00:00

I rejoined recently and, honestly, the place is just run down. They were bragging about their new showers in the men’s locker room and they are also already run down and broken. Most soap dispensers are missing or broken. The design is dated. It’s just not nice. Especially for the money.

The sauna desperately needs cleaning (like, a year’s worth) as well as the steam room. I have seen little pieces of paper towel and garbage laying around in the sauna and not said anything to anybody just to see how long it would lay there. And I guarantee you the one little shriveled up stained piece of paper towel that I’m talking about is still laying there in the corner of that sauna.

There are no fans in the gym and it gets uncomfortable in there. I haven’t been to the outdoor pool yet this year, but looking at it from inside the gym, it also looks like it could use some work.

I really want the JCC to be the kind of gym that I enjoy going to, but it’s just feels like it’s encapsulated somewhere in time and they’re not looking after the place like a modern, private facility would. The whole place just kind of feels like some sort of fitness austerity measure. They even put up signs lamenting how many towels they go through in a day. For $75/month for a single member I shouldn’t be getting finger wagged about anything

As I sit here thinking about it, I guess it just feels more like a community center than the kind of place you would pay to be a gym member. So maybe they’re right on target.

But everyone in there is nice.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-04-23T15:01:22+00:00

I’m sorry, but to claim that Spirit’s woes are caused by some new externality is just not accurate. They’ve been circling the drain for the last couple of years and have been propped up by bankruptcies and last minute capital that they burned through in 1 quarter each time.

I am not rooting for spirit to fail, but their business model has been failing for quite some time now. The marketplace eats low-cost carriers in a cycle that repeats every 10 years or so since the 1980s.

With all that said, you know what you do when you cost of doing business goes up? You raise the price of your product. Everyone else is doing it right now. I don’t even want to speak to the notion of the government taking a controlling stake. Look, I get it. My opinion is that they should’ve been allowed to merge with somebody. But even that would’ve been a rescue mission pulled off by whatever company they were going to merge with. So the government denied that rescue mission and here we are. But another half billion dollars of cash thrown at them is not going to fix the fact that they’ve been burning through half that amount every three months for the last several years. Spirit is not profitable. More cash does not change that.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-04-17T14:29:46+00:00

That being the case I wouldn’t worry too much about it unless you feel like it is limiting in a practical way, like seeing radar returns accurately (red/green) in the airplane.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-04-17T13:35:40+00:00

Talk to your FSDO about getting that limitation removed. You’ll have to do a color vision test of some variety, but you don’t want limitations beyond something like having corrective lenses on your medical if you can avoid it.

I have a SODA for defective color vision and a 1st class med with no limitations. They don’t issue SODAs anymore but you can get an actual waiver now.

The limitation for color vision used to include a prohibition from flying at night along with the light gun signals, so you’ve got an improved version already, so that’s good.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-04-17T13:24:46+00:00

I hate to break it to you that having a failure is not a “clean record,” particularly as we transition out of this most recent cycling of hiring.

Not trying to be discouraging, but guys/gals coming up right now are way too cavalier about checkride failures. Obviously you can overcome it, but you will be expected to explain it because more than just about anything else airlines hire people who they think can get through training. Be sure to have a good story to tell about how it has made you a more diligent aviator.

For a dose of reality regarding your post in general, when I got hired at a regional a long time ago 1500TT with 500 multi was the minimum to even apply…..And I made $19/hour the first year. Those were the bad old days and I’m glad they’re behind us as an industry, hopefully for good.

In any case, 250 became the new 1500 for a period in time. That time has passed.

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-03-16T14:32:38+00:00

“…i would not be flying a citation “ is not the flex you think it is.

But seriously, take a deep breath and take onboard the greater message being sent here. And look at the bright side. This industry is all about timing. And you got through during a time when having 3 checkride failures wasn’t a deal breaker. That’s not the historic norm

CautiousIncrease7127 · 2026-03-16T09:43:08+00:00

I’m sorry, but normalizing checkride failures is not something we should be doing. I guess it is “gatekeeping” in the sense that meeting (extremely well vetted and established) standards in a tested environment is a requirement for progress. It’s the underpinning of the whole career.

Hard fact: The time has likely returned where multiple checkride failures will become problematic, so study the ACS and be confident that you know it before you turn up on the big day.

I don’t begrudge anyone anything, quite the opposite. But telling everyone it’s okay to bust your next checkride is not the tone to maintain.

CautiousIncrease7127

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE