Upgrade Reject

[NYCPilot]

Unfortunately, I saw a few people fail two or three times at the regional I was at. I think one guy ended up busting four times before moving to a different carrier.

I assume he was formally terminated and a notation made in his PRIA records. How difficult is it to obtain employment after failing so many times.

 

[Guitar Guy]

He wasn't formally terminated. Instead, he was told that his next checkride would be with the director of training. The message was, "Find a new job in the interim" because this pilot and the head of training did not like each other and the pilot outright blamed the director of training for his "training difficulties". As for an entry in his PRIA records, sometimes the truth can be somewhat obscured. If, for example, someone is doing poorly in upgrade training and elects to discontinue or is discontinued by the company, it's not quite the same on the records as a formal checkride failure. At least that's how I understand it.

If you're interested in how often someone can or should be able to fail checkrides and still continue as a professional pilot, there was a thread on that topic a few weeks ago with a lot of opinions offered. Try a search if you'd like to read more.

 

[NYCPilot]

Well having flown with some of these guys who had trouble upgrading, how would you rate them as pilots. Shouldthey even be copilots to begin with. I'm assuming that if they cant make good decisions, they probably lack in other areas as well, such as flying abilities overall. Would this hold true?

 

[Rook]

We have an asian female 727 S/O at UPS that has tried to upgrade to F/O numerous times and for various reasons she can't make the grade. It will be interesting to see what happens when we finally retire the last 3 crew aircraft. Will she get one more shot to upgrade or has the company already made her some type of deal to keep her from trying again? Time will tell. The bottom line with her is that as long as she is employed here, NO pilot can ever get fired for reasons related to proficiency and failing a checkride. She's Miss Job Security!

Had a UPS guy in my jumpseat a couple of months ago that told me the same story. Thought he might've been exaggerating. Guess he wasn't.