Civilian checkrides are benign compared to military checks.
FAA check:
1. Simulator - Prebrief/oral 1 hour, sim 2 hrs. Probably a steep turn and a stall prevent, V1 cut, Eng out GA/Landing, maybe 1 system malfunction. VOR & ILS
2. Aircraft - 1 normal leg, T/O, cruise, landing.
Military:
1. 1/2 day of written testing
2. Instruments/Emergency Procedures Checkride. Probably about 3 hours depending on the aircraft. Several systems failures. TACAN, VOR, ILS, etc approaches, Eng failures, Eng out approaches, point-to-point navigation on the HSI and random holding.
3. Tactical flight check (varies by aircraft and mission, of course). Mission planning the day before. Must plan strike mission and brief flight of 2-4 aircraft. All observed/graded by stan-eval evaluator.
Inflight check items: Leadership of multi-ship formation, T/O, air refueling including tanker autopilot-off and breakaway demonstation (could be at night also), navigation, high & low-level flight, threat avoidance/reaction, bomb runs, formation breakup, perhaps some actual airwork (MDS dependent), back to base for about an hour of approaches and touch & goes including engine cuts after liftoff, actual engine out approach and landing, no-flap approach and landing, non-precision eng out approach and landing. If you're an instructor pilot, you have to instruct and talk while demonstrating all of the above. Oh, and BTW, they're real checks . . some actually bust them.
From my experience, civilian training is much more cursory as dictated by the cost. Hence, the airlines like military pilots who are known quality. Even after pre-screening in bugsmashers, Undergraduate Pilot Training in the USAF washes out about a third of the student pilots, maybe even higher in Navy flight school. You're not going to see logbook padding or faking from military pilots because their careers are military records.
For the demands of civilian airline/corporate flying, past a certain experience point it's really immaterial the differences between a civilian trained pilot and military trained one. The airline recruiters like military pilots because overall, they've had better success rates with them (read that cheaper to train).
For me personally, I enjoy flying with pure civilian pilots because they've had experiences different from mine, which makes for good conversation in cruise.
FAA check:
1. Simulator - Prebrief/oral 1 hour, sim 2 hrs. Probably a steep turn and a stall prevent, V1 cut, Eng out GA/Landing, maybe 1 system malfunction. VOR & ILS
2. Aircraft - 1 normal leg, T/O, cruise, landing.
Military:
1. 1/2 day of written testing
2. Instruments/Emergency Procedures Checkride. Probably about 3 hours depending on the aircraft. Several systems failures. TACAN, VOR, ILS, etc approaches, Eng failures, Eng out approaches, point-to-point navigation on the HSI and random holding.
3. Tactical flight check (varies by aircraft and mission, of course). Mission planning the day before. Must plan strike mission and brief flight of 2-4 aircraft. All observed/graded by stan-eval evaluator.
Inflight check items: Leadership of multi-ship formation, T/O, air refueling including tanker autopilot-off and breakaway demonstation (could be at night also), navigation, high & low-level flight, threat avoidance/reaction, bomb runs, formation breakup, perhaps some actual airwork (MDS dependent), back to base for about an hour of approaches and touch & goes including engine cuts after liftoff, actual engine out approach and landing, no-flap approach and landing, non-precision eng out approach and landing. If you're an instructor pilot, you have to instruct and talk while demonstrating all of the above. Oh, and BTW, they're real checks . . some actually bust them.
From my experience, civilian training is much more cursory as dictated by the cost. Hence, the airlines like military pilots who are known quality. Even after pre-screening in bugsmashers, Undergraduate Pilot Training in the USAF washes out about a third of the student pilots, maybe even higher in Navy flight school. You're not going to see logbook padding or faking from military pilots because their careers are military records.
For the demands of civilian airline/corporate flying, past a certain experience point it's really immaterial the differences between a civilian trained pilot and military trained one. The airline recruiters like military pilots because overall, they've had better success rates with them (read that cheaper to train).
For me personally, I enjoy flying with pure civilian pilots because they've had experiences different from mine, which makes for good conversation in cruise.
