#7-Designated Pilot Examiner - Rescinded 03-03-21

I became a Designated Pilot Examiner circa 1984 in order to better serve our customers and offer a more reasonable evaluation than I believed possible at that time, plus it seemed the logical extension of my duties as Chief Instructor where I trained just as many pilots as I tested. Although I felt totally at ease with my ability to fairly critique the flying skills of others, I was keenly aware of the long term responsibility associated with certificating each pilot. More so than most I suppose because there were many times when I lost friends, co-workers, business associates, acquaintances, and former students; at least 25-30 people. Although none of these was a result of my instruction methods or testing there were valuable lessons to be learned from their misfortune and so I altered my teaching to prevent others from having similar accidents. Considering that only one of these accidents was mechanical failure (wing separation), the rest were pilot mistakes, and therefore preventable. I attended the funerals, witnessed the tragic loss of life, devastated and heart broken families, destroyed careers, the investigations, second guessing of the deceased, impromptu judgements, factless conclusions, the painful memories, throughout which, I was careful, not to prejudge those pilots no longer alive to defend themselves, seeking only to learn from their misfortune, in order to prevent similar occurrences with others. Many times I refined my teaching methods, maneuvers and procedures, to produce a safer, more skilful pilot. As a flight instructor, I trained past the standards, encouraged students to explore the airplanes, and their own limits (under direct supervision, in a carefully controlled environment) such as crosswind landings to the limits of rudder travel, steep turns to 60°, full stalls while preventing spin entry using bank angles to 45°, realistic abnormal/emergency procedures, regulation compliance and decision making. As a Chief pilot, habitual regulation compliance, in depth company manual knowledge including flight standards, Airplane flight manual, systems, emergency procedures, in flight feather and restarts, 55° banked turns, recovery from failure to maintain VMC at circling minimums, engine failures immediately after takeoff, aircraft upset and recovery in IMC, fire in the aircraft, simultaneous double engine failures, to identify a few.

I didn't remain a pilot Examiner all those years for the money, prestige, social standing, ego or any other self centered reasons but instead to insure the proficiency, safety and longevity of the pilots, their families and passengers. Accordingly, I never compromised the check ride standards for any reason, be that, financial gain, a personally trained student or close friend, to overlook an "off day", etc and not once put an unsafe or unqualified airman in the system. I have given hundreds, if not thousands of Practical tests ranging from Recreational to Airline Transport Pilot, Single and Multi engine, Flight Instructor, large and small airplanes. Many of these have undertaken successful careers as Airline or Corporate pilots and each has been asked to critique me by the same standards. Most applicants that have tested with me, can vouch for the thoroughness of the flight test including compliance with the national standards established by FAA. Not all those tested by me were satisfied though, but ALL those that complained, each had failed significantly, some more than once. Each applicant with unsatisfactory performance had the discrepancies explained in detail, the necessary corrective actions, and my additional recommendations and their instructor encouraged to monitor this debriefing. If they felt that my decision to fail was unjustified, I explained their rights to retest with another Examiner, an FAA inspector, or have my supervising inspector observe a retest with me again, but only IF they felt it would be a fair test. I don't believe any pilot Examiner wants to fail an applicant because it's bad news you have to give an applicant that, no doubt tried their best and yet didn't pass, it's unpopular with the recommending instructor/school, much more work for the Examiner to process disapprovals, and therefore more time consuming. My fail to pass ratio from beginning to end was 25-30%, including my own school's students, some personally trained by myself, and not much different elsewhere. Most of the time, an applicant acknowledged their unsatisfactory performance and accepted my critique with very little explanation or argument although I encouraged each to be totally honest with me and with themselves and to me their perspective. Why did these folks fail? Usually because one or two maneuvers didn't meet the FAA standards such as:

• Lack of crosswind correction or loss of directional control during takeoffs, and landings.

• Inability to conduct proper short field or soft field takeoffs/landings.

• Unsafe steep turns, slow flight, emergency procedures, or accidental stalls.

• Complete loss of control during instrument maneuvers occasionally rolling inverted.

• Shutting down the wrong engine during multi tests.

• Loss of control while maneuvering with one engine inoperative (some up high, some low while attempting to land).

• Forgetting to secure a failed engine, and many more.

 Some required direct intervention to prevent an accident but all were serious deficiencies that needed more instruction and practice to pass. Sometimes we never got past the ground portion because a systems scenario, emergency procedure, or airspace application would have been fatal, had it been actually occurring in flight; for example: smoke, intense heat, or fire in cockpit where the most common, deadly answer was to open all windows, and vents while totally ignoring checklists. OR; conflicting gyro indications in IMC, causing applicants to enter graveyard spiral during which I would provide additional information such as increasing airspeed, rapidly decreasing altitude, increasing G forces, which is exactly as it happens. None of these would have survived because, if an applicant cannot describe the proper actions while safely on the ground, they certainly wouldn't do it correctly in a high stress flight environment. Sometimes their unsatisfactory performance was the result of improper instruction but more common, was the stress of the check ride in combination with a maneuver not quite mastered. I have never failed an applicant for not holding tolerances exactly, a couple minor procedural errors or even a mistake or two, in fact; perfection is not the standard and specifically so stated in the Examiners guidance material. Some of the most egregious failures complained to FAA - which appeared to accept their explanations as to mistreatment by myself. An instrument applicant failed 3 times and did the same things wrong each time, supposedly after receiving additional instruction and recommendations. The failed items: routinely exceeding airspeed limitations for his own airplane, gear speed, flap speeds by more than 20k, losing upwards of 500' in steep turns; pulling excessive Gs, then using outside references to recover from spiral maneuver; and ILS approach with navaid turned off (Localizer/Glide slope). Think I was unreasonable or unfair? Then ask yourself how you would feel sitting in the backseat with this gentleman at the controls. He complained that I accused him of looking outside (instead of the instrument references), that I was being unreasonable and ordered him out of my office. I was suspended as pilot Examiner until I "explained myself" so I took a morning off, traveled to Milwaukee to explain the above discrepancies, my choice of words when I accused him of cheating (looking outside) and my lack of diplomacy ordering him out of my office. He had told me to just shut up and give him the disapproval so I ordered I'm out and not return. FAA ordered me to use "better" words (like peeking) instead of cheating, etc. and next time simply refer him to another Examiner. Well; he did and subsequently passed although, personally, I felt that someone had put this unsafe airman in the system and I went on the record saying so.

Another applicant seeking initial certification as commercial pilot in a multi-engine aircraft complained that I asked questions "no one could answer", that he really knew the material and I was being unfair but with nearly every question asked; he would incorrectly answer or offer no explanation at all. Systems, regulations, procedures, aerodynamics, meteorology; always the same. He was one of our students and both his instructor and myself recommended he not test due to personal family stress and inadequate performance. He tested anyway, at least twice and then a third time, I believe. Although my POI was supervising this test, he talked with the pilot at length and listened to his complaints, a good portion of which were posted on our website as a negative review. Nothing too bad came out of this but it amounted to another black mark on my record.

Then came another complaint in 2019 from a flight instructor applicant in Atlanta that complained I wouldn't discontinue flight test when he requested it and that I gave him 5 tries for steep turns, then failed him anyway ( Examiners not allowed to give even a second chance). I did do those things but with extenuating circumstances; after a rough ground test portion, we departed and he made some minor mistake then said "I want to discontinue" to which I responded with "are you sure? We are just starting, perhaps you will fly better from here on. Let's try a little longer "so we did continue and some things were fine, others not so good and with the second unsatisfactory maneuver, I was required to discontinue. One of the maneuvers failed was the steep turns. Testing for instructor requires standards at the commercial level so I requested a 55° bank angle 360 turn in both directions. He did a 360 each way with 35-40 bank which I thought might have been his clearing turns so I restated my request for the 55° bank, upon which he did a sloppy 45° (but within limits), stopped then asked me to demonstrate one so I did. He said he understood then attempted the maneuver but didn't control bank properly and lost too much altitude. I may not be allowed to give second chances but was permitted to conduct additional testing if unsure of results or for miscommunication, both were present here, or so I thought. Yes, I can understand why that can be considered 5 tries but I thought I was being fair and explaining the communication errors. It was never my intention to fail him or do anything that might be construed as unfair.

My Principal Operations Inspector of the MKE FSDO, called about this and although I didn't have my test notes available, I remembered enough of the test to respond,onl only for him to jump on the first thing I said with without regard for any further explanation. He didn't want to hear it and I was subsequently ordered to conduct 3 separate tests consisting of one each for Private, Commercial and Flight instructor with FAA inspectors only, no applicants, just simulated tests. I was judged by an unbiased, independent inspector that decided there was no reason for further evaluation after the first test, nevertheless, I was told by him that I wasn't "out of the woods yet" and to be careful. I agreed to not do anything that could be construed to be a second chance and to discontinue the test at the applicants first request. He understood my reasons and agreed with me, in principle, that most Pilot Examiners want the applicant to pass by giving them every opportunity but concluded I had gone too far.

Turns out, it didn't take too many complaints to get the designation rescinded, just for my name to get mentioned a few too many times and a disingenuous POI, who incidentally, never once gave me a flight test, evaluated my flight proficiency or observed me conduct a practical test.

FAA's National Examiner program transferred pilot testing services to private industry, standardized the tests, stated the knowledge needed, risk management, maneuvers and proficiency levels required for certification to be conducted by experienced professional pilots outside of the agency. Although the objective of the DPE program was to standardize testing and permit very experienced pilots from industry to test applicants to industry standards established by FAA, this program has been degraded in recent years. One reason is the decreasing standards established by the pilot examiner program which appear to be set up and enforced by inexperienced pilots with very little background as a professional pilots demanding prerequisites and standards that they themselves, have not met. There may be a lot of puffing and posturing but the facts are that the FAA is full of themselves as exemplified by statements such as" the FAA giveth and the FAA taketh away" and the threats about enforcement and jail terms to Examiners without cause (This I have previously complained about). Also, not appreciated were the frequent dispariging comments made about the pilots in fatal accidents. This is from the OKC instructors on the recurrent DPE course. Another annoying tactic FAA personnel use is to change the subject, dodge the question or say it's not important when faced with something they can't answer; not exactly the traits of good instructors, especially from FAA leadership. That leaves you with numerous pilot Examiners becoming "yes men" because anything else is treated as "not getting along", a "bad attitude" or "not working harmoniously with FAA".

 Another factor relating to the degradation of testing standards, based upon my observations and experiences, is the tendency of FAA supervising inspectors to heavily relax training and testing standards at the very large training schools. I observed many examples of this, complained repeatedly to corporate management, Chief pilots, flight instructors, office managers, and FAA. The students themselves complained to me; that they were just a number, valued only for the tuition, not important, forced to test/retest before being ready, had simulator training logged as completed yet wasn't done, but charged for(because everybody does it), sign-offs without the training (knowledge test review, additional training for retest), and my personal favorite; "You're not the first Examiner to have these complaints". The very first applicant tested in Florida (CFI-I, I believe) remarked that "you better pass me or they won't ask you back". A school Chief Instructor in Atlanta said "we need to keep our numbers up or you won't be testing our applicants". Told them both, my obligations were to uphold the standards and that their words were meaningless. The FAA, School administrators, Chief pilots, the recommending instructors, schedulers, and anyone else I could think of,was informed of these deficiencies and yet ,did nothing. Some specific examples of PTS/ACS non compliance were: landings, stall recognition and recovery, specialty takeoffs and landings, fire procedures, steep turns, multi-engine operations, to name a few. For example: losing 500' of altitude upon recovery from power on stall in an aircraft climbing 1500 fpm, opening all vents with cabin fire, or unwillingness to secure a failed engine (with fire) on a twin. Most of these issues were the direct result of improper/inadequate training, and unrealistic simulations that prevail at these very large training academies sanctioned by FAA. From my personal observation of these applicants, all cases where a disapproval notice was issued, a fatal outcome would have resulted had the situation been actual. 

         Something I have noticed at nearly every DPE renewal seminar was the reluctance of evaluators to the actual feathering of simulated failed engine (contrary to 8900.2). In fact, we were given an option to avoid the ACS requirement by moving propeller control momentarily to feather and immediately forward thus precluding actual feathering and subsequent restart, contrary to the intent of the ACS. As a professional pilot, I think it's a fallacy to rely on engine longevity in lieu of pilot proficiency however the FAA knows this but appears to be more interested in the illusion of safety than actually requiring it. Especially disturbing, to me, is the tendency of the FAA to personally align with the big schools and accept THEIR standards, potentially disregarding unsafe teaching methods. It's easier to get rid of the guy complaining than require changes from the large training centers. The most disturbing issues are; crosswind takeoffs/landings, stall recognition, avoidance, and recovery. Emergency procedures. All correctable.

I have made a living for 52 years as professional pilot, instructor, examiner, airline pilot, chief pilot, chief instructor, Director of operations, simulator instructor, Aviation mechanic and maintenance inspector. Logged over 33,000 flight hours, had engines explode and catch fire, cracked cylinders, had cylinders separate from the engine, cracked cases, several cabin fires, numerous gear failures, hydraulic failures, electrical issues, in large and small aircraft, high speed loss of directional control in DC3, actual unintentional stalls at low altitudes (less than 500'), aircraft upsets in IMC, and I could go on. Many times I have watched pilots under stress with these and similar circumstances and they will not respond safely unless properly trained which is NOT the case of today's pilots. As an example, a first officer that attempted to secure the good engine instead of the one on fire even though there was a large fireball on the left side of the aircraft, I had to prevent him from pulling the right mixture back. He thought I was taking too long, and was trying to help but he got rushed and made a mistake. A learning experience, for us both. All the posturing and confidence disappear when the cockpit is filling up with smoke or the engine is shaking itself off the airframe.

For years, I have been doing what the FAA has been reluctant to do: actually teaching and practicing safety by feathering and restarting engines in flight (hundreds of times), conducting crosswind takeoffs and landings to the limits of rudder authority, full stalls while preventing spin entry with rudder useage, encouraging students to experiment and "feel" the aircraft while maneuvering at critically slow airspeeds, recovering from full stalls with minimum decrease in angle of attack and minimal loss of altitude. Steep turns with maximum legal bank angles. 

I am sure some folks out there may disagree with some of this and feel I was too strict, demanded too much, or unfair but I always tried to be safe, legal and realistic.

This designation was rescinded 4 days after an accident caused by conditions not foreseeable, preventable or resolveable by anyone. They contrived a case against me by twisting my words around even claimed statements I never made, and did so without ever giving me due process.