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Should an instructor or examiner distract the student or checkride candidate?

Cttime wrote:

You need to know how to prioritize and task switch. You also need to demonstrate being pilot IN COMMAND and tell your passengers to can-it when they ignore your briefing about the sterile cockpit.

I agree in principle, but is a student-examiner situation a representative situation for how the pilot would react to distractions in “real life” ? Probably not. With an examiner on board the student/pilot already is distracted. It’s not a normal situation in any way, so the pilot may not act normally to additional distraction.

IMO training at a controlled airfield with lots of normal traffic, will give all the distractions you could hope for from ATC and other traffic. You either manage it, or you quit. Most have no problems, a few takes some time to adapt, very few quit (or they quit before this is relevant). IME (still short experience) what happens is pilots tend to fall out of the procedures when distracted. They set out flaps too early, or forget to set out flaps at the correct place/time, difficulties holding altitude and so on. It’s like they aren’t focused enough, and/or haven’t done their homework well enough. I would think an examiner will notice this right away without adding additional distractions. Just my 2 cents.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

A well-known examiner here, a good friend of mine too. His party piece is leaving his headset beside the compass so they set the DI to the wrong heading. They should cop the mistake once they line up on the rwy but sometimes they do set off on the wrong heading.

Buying, Selling, Flying
EISG, Ireland

Testing response to distractions and unbriefed simulated emergencies seem eminently fair, but surely what you don’t want to do is to put the candidate in a position where they’re thinking to themselves “is this a distraction test, or is this bloke just waffling on because that’s what he’s like?”

EGLM & EGTN

I had the opposite during my Brevet de Base flight: the examiner pretended to fall asleep! I assume he was keeping a surreptitious eye on what I was doing, and wanted to see how I would fly normally, i.e. without anyone watching me. This was probably even more distracting though

For comparison, on my driving test I kept trying to engage the examiner in conversation, but to no avail. After finishing he was very apologetic, as they were under strict instructions to not be accused of influencing the outcome of the test through distractions. We had a long chat (it turned out he was into researching family history) then said ‘oh by the way you passed’

EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom

From the US “Airplane Airman Certification Standards” (and previously in the Practical Test Standards)

The evaluator should incorporate realistic distractions during the flight portion of the practical test to evaluate the pilot’s situational awareness and ability to utilize proper control technique while dividing attention both inside and outside the cockpit.

Biggin Hill
15 Posts
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