The Lowdown

First of all, thank you to everyone for the positive comments and emails. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! It made a difference.

Wow! 19 months, 2 days from the first day of flight school to an airline check ride. It feels very surreal. It's had to believe that 2 years ago I was just beginning the quest to become an airline pilot and would have never expected for it to happen so soon.

Well I'm back in Arizona enjoying my family. The kids are sick, but it's nice to be home. It feels good knowing I don't have to leave until Wednesday afternoon. Ahhhh.

So...about the check ride. I guess it's about time to talk about it.

In summary, it was AWFUL. Yes I passed, but the one word that truly describes the experience is AWFUL.

The examiner was fair and that's all that should have been expected. However, he has a military background which seemed to play the lead role during the oral and check ride.

I arrived at the training center twenty minutes early to relax, collect my thoughts and prepare. We ran into each other in the men's room, exchanges pleasantries and I headed to the break room to relax. He came in right behind me and said, "Ok, let's get this party started." Crap. I wasn't ready, but felt like I had no choice.

Every previous check ride has begun with a little ice breaker. Hi. How are you? Where are you from? What is your background? Let me tell you a little bit about myself. Here's what to expect from this event. Well...zip...zero...zilch. He asked for my license, medical, FCC and paperwork. I said, "Well I'm excited about being here today. It's been a long journey to finally get to this moment. I've been looking forward to it." With an absolute straight face, zero sarcasm intended, he said, "Flattery isn't going to get you anywhere with me." Umm...ok. My statement wasn't intended to flatter him, but whatever. That was the tone for the oral.

The oral started with a performance problem. He wrote down some weather data and then told me he wanted the performance for a specific airport and runway. He said he'd be back in five minutes and left. When he came back, we went over the data and he started quizzing me on all aspects of performance. We then went in to the systems of the aircraft including flight controls, engines, APU, fuel system, electrical system and environmental control system. While discussing each one, he would ask for emergency memory items for certain events, specific limitations and procedures.

In past experiences, if I didn't understand the question or the concept from the examiner, he/she would redirect to find out if I needed to look at it a different way or just didn't understand. Not this time. He would just ask the question over and over until I figured out what he wanted to hear. There was little room for error.

Usually, an oral exam has a natural flow and it is pretty easy to determine when it is coming to an end. This time, there was no segue. His final question was about fuel system shut off valves and how they can be closed. When I answered it, he simply said, "That concludes your oral. Here's your dispatch release. Look it over and I'll see you in the sim in 10 minutes."

I met the captain who was assigned to fly with me. We exchanged pleasantries and he assured me that he would do everything in his power to make the LOE go smoothly. He would take the first leg (ATL to CLT) and I would fly back.

We had one item on the Minimum Equipment List (MEL). It was a deferred right pack. A pack is an air conditioning unit. The aircraft has two packs. During single pack operations, the CRJ-200 is limited to operations below FL250. There is also a different method to transfer the 10th stage bleeds.

The flight out was uneventful. From push-back and engine start to taxi, takeoff and arrival in Charlotte, everything went smoothly. He programmed an over temp caution message for Hydraulic system 3B. We ran the QRH procedures and continued on to CLT and landed fine. He told us to take a 10 minute break and be ready with the same passenger & cargo load for the return leg. That made it easier to do the load manifest.

He didn't give me any starter malfunctions and the taxi and takeoff were without incident. The pack deferral and hydraulic caution were cleared and operation was normal. He gave us a 200 knot tailwind, which is common on check rides to save time and money. Once approaching Atlanta, he started throwing a bunch of stuff at us, including a nearly impossible crossing and speed restriction. He was intentionally throwing as much as he could at me to see if I would get flustered and do something stupid. While I did feel the pressure, it didn't affect my decision making skills. I decided to go missed and slow things down a bit. I think that's what was expected. We came around for a second ILS approach and landed without any problems. He gave me a nice crosswind and I touched down on center line.

After the flight ended we went out to the lobby where he informed me that I had passed. The check ride was worse than it sounded. To include every horrible detail would take 10 pages. Like I said, he was fair and that's all that should be expected.

He did say that he threw a bunch of stuff at me in ATL because that is what it is really like there every day. He wanted the LOE to be as real as he could make it.

I thanked him for his time and told him that I walked away having learned a few things. He sounded offended by that and replied with, "Don't ever tell an examiner that they taught you something. My job isn't to teach you anything. It's to see if you can fly worth a damn and if I feel comfortable putting you in a $25 million aircraft with passengers." I replied by thanking him again and said, "I didn't really say that YOU taught me anything. I said that I came away from this experience having learned a few things. I have always learned new things on a check ride." That doesn't mean the examiner is teaching, it just means that learning has occurred.

I have also been told by many examiners that their goal is to evaluate me successfully and teach a thing or two. Oh well, either way it doesn't matter. What matters is that I passed.

I called my instructor afterwards. He really is a good guy. He confessed that when I asked him about my examiner before the check ride, that he was afraid to tell me about him. He didn't want to make me more nervous than I normally would be (A LOT). He said that the guy is very fair, but has a bit of a reputation as a difficult examiner. He was probably right about not telling me about the examiner. I would have been a bigger wreck and probably would have busted the check ride somehow.

It's over. Almost time to start flying on the line.

Enough about me already. Blogging is fun, but kind of a self-centered past time. Once in a while, after going back to read an old post, I wonder why other people read it. I am constantly amazed by the number of visitors to this blog as well as the countries where visitors reside. Maybe one day I'll have enough time to create and post a map of visitors.

I just checked my schedule and it's there! More about that tomorrow. Time for bed.