In my almost 3 years in aviation, I’ve noticed the big stigma around checkride failures—and to a certain extent I understand it. A candidate’s success-to-failure ratio is the quickest, most objective way for an employer to gauge knowledge, flying skill, and ability under pressure. It’s a huge metric. But for me, that’s where the negative connotations end. The rest of “failure” is a big full bag of opportunity.
Even though checkride failure is treated as one of the most precise measuring sticks, I’ve also heard our elders say that when you’re asked about an Unsat, the best way to explain yourself is simple: accept what and why you did wrong, show accountability, and—most importantly—express clearly what you learned from the fall.
Shisa! At this point, that second paragraph is all I’ve got, so I’m hanging on to it, doing exactly what our mentors say, and coming up with my own acronym: Acceptance, Accountability, Analysis, Assimilation. The four A’s of checkride failure—though the most accurate last word is “APRENDE,” which means LEARN in Spanish. That’s right. Learn. That is what we’re supposed to do most with a checkride failure: learn what happened, and learn about ourselves.
“Squeeze all the knowledge you can and take advantage of it, FAILURE is the best window we have to take a look at who we are” – Capibarus Mangus
Today, two days after my 4th checkride failure, I’m actually pretty distraught. When I started this journey into aviation, I never for a moment thought that this was going to be my experience. Failing a checkride is truly a painful thing, but putting my head down is something I don’t do. Even if theres hardly any, I have to find the positives of this heinous pattern.
I was born with a big heart and for the most part, I have led my life with it. I’m pretty sure that if ever a situation existed in which they have to perform an autopsy on my ass they will find out that I was built like Big Red. “His heart was 50% larger than the rest…”. In the same way that I have a tendency to fall, I have an even more powerful tendency to rise.
A big heart provides a microscope on life that very few people get to see through, it is great. Mine is like an F35, all tuned up and beautiful and fast, the pinnacle of evolution, a perfect sounding machine that can take you through the most joyful of rides or can crash you into the ground at 1000 miles an hour. A double edge sword.
My heart, in its latest act of “let’s go after the next dream”, decided to chuck me into the aviation world. And at the moment I feel like it is outside looking in and laughing. “Ha, you said you liked planes”, “you wanted to see the world from the sky”, “you wanted to give an example to your niece and nephew of what it meant to chase your dreams”, “you wanted to honor the seed that was planted by your godfather”, “you wanted to believe that you could make living from something you loved”. Again!
Well shisa! If aviation was a boxing match and a round lasted 3 years, the bell to this first round officially rung with a poorly executed go around, and I’m sitting in the blue, or red corner, cause I really don’t remember what was the color of the pill I took, and pondering on 3 years of ass whooping with very few landed punches, a 100,000 dollars in debt, and a lack of confidence the size of runway 16 Right at KDEN.
Don’t get me wrong, I can operate a plane, and I have never failed an oral or a maneuver. My main problems are anxiety during testing, and a non expected hole on ADM. The issue with flying, that most people don’t know, is that being a professional pilot has nothing to do with flying a plane. In flying, the ultimate test of your skills is tied up with the quality of the decisions you make while up in the air. In aviation we are measured by your ability to listen, observe, analyze, and commit to the most correct course of action.
By now we all know that the most beautiful part of a mistake is all the knowledge that we can squeeze from it, so for this UNSAT, that hurts more than the rest, I need to squeeze every single last drop of data. My goal. Ultimate self-awareness. But how do you open the floodgates of self-awareness? How can I be as hard as possible on myself without forgetting that I must have some sort of compassion with my own being.
The first thing I must accept and internalize is that if I would have succeeded 4 weeks ago, it would have been dangerous. And I almost did, which makes me feel blessed and lucky that I was in very good hands with my DPE. The man that was sitting by my right side that day wanted me to succeed. For the first time in my flying career I was being examined by what could be considered a professional examiner by vocation. For him, it was painful to give me the disapproval, but his assessment was precise and necessary, and I will always be grateful for it.
I don’t know if I will ever fly with 300 unknown souls in my plane, but I’m sure that if I ever have children, I’m gonna fly with them, and not being a safe and confident pilot in that situation would be a dishonor and an offense to life itself.
Now that I have pinpointed the hole in my skills, I need to take action towards upgrading that side of me. I need to keep fostering my self-awareness, I need to remain critical and analytical about my behavior and I need to fly more. 20 hours in the last year is not enough to deal proficiently with the high traffic environment of the Grand Phoenix. Whatever are all the aspects and elements that affect calmness, confidence, and sound decision making, I need to unearth and get after them with full commitment. I need to fly with some people and see how they handle situations. One of the biggest issues in our training today is that pilots can get a commercial rating with very little real PIC or solo time, but that is another story and another topic.
OK, so the bell has rung. This first round is over. I have proven myself that I have a hard chin, sitting in the corner taking some deep breaths, and thankfully, and to my surprise, I see humans coming in through the ropes and aiding to clean my wounds. In the same way that I didn’t imagine failing all these checkrides, I didn’t imagine the community that I am starting to become a part of. With that said, this aviation thing is competitive and there are a lot of things about this industry that I don’t understand yet. But in my almost three years in this world of planes I have found some human gems and I’m very grateful for them.
In some ways, I’m having trouble keeping up, and those I have found that I love, I don’t want to let them down. For me, this is a moment to step back and recess what I’m really doing here. Why do I fly these planes, and where do I want to take this extra dimension of myself? The break is almost over, and I’m very much looking forward to the second round of my aviation career.
It was Com Multi by the way, and super happy to announce that since the moment I started writing this and now, I have passed my commercial multiengine checkride and I feel so great about it. Thanks to everyone that helped me push through. Above all, Matt and Carol Schulz, and Connor Gentry. And Above all. Thank you Flight Stars and the Diamond itself.
