I came across this on another forum:
No one seemed to know the back story for sure, but it seems like a percentage of the checkrides had “irregularities” so everyone for the last 11 years who was examined by this guy has ratings revoked and has to take a new checkride with the FSDO (which means a long waiting list) if they don’t have some later checkride that grants relief. I’ve seen the process for an initial CFI, and it’s an all-day long affair. Imagine doing your initial CFI with this guy legitimately, then having it revoked years later. I’d probably simply give up at that point.
No doubt this examiner will be sued to smithereens.
Amazing. Came out 15th July 2020 PDF
FAA checkrides tend to span half a day for private, and one day for commercial or IR – IME.
There is a precedent for this, rather nearer to Europe, but that particular subject must not be discussed here due to past legal threats. The FAA does indeed act in this manner quite readily. Candidates then end up with invalid checkrides; you walk away with the DPE’s signed pass certificate but the FAA never sends the paperwork to you. That might be a clue that not all is quite right… I know of maybe half a dozen cases and the candidates may not discover it until they do a checkride for something else and then the (new) DPE tells they they don’t actually have the previous license/rating…
The FAA has also banned A&Ps, A&P/IAs… I know one personally.
What is unusual is that in this case the FAA has gone public with the debacle.
The FAA might want to do some random checks on Aeromedical Examiners in the USA too. I have almost always had mine done in Switzerland or the UK, where they invariably take 40 to 60 minutes and are very rigorous. But for reasons of timing I once had one done in Florida, at an office right next to a very busy GA airport. From the time I walked into the doctor’s room and said hello, to the time I walked out took, 47 seconds. I know this for sure as I could see what was happening with other pilots ahead of me and decided to use my stopwatch. The whole process went like this: Doc “you look healthy, is everything OK”. Me “yes I am feeling great”. Doc “OK then, lets issue you with the new certificate then”. Hands me off to assistant for paperwork and processing of credit card.
Peter wrote:
I know of maybe half a dozen cases and the candidates may not discover it until they do a checkride for something else and then the (new) DPE tells they they don’t actually have the previous license/rating…
How would that work? The certificate that the DPE issues is valid for 60 days. If you haven’t received your ticket from the FAA by then, you’d likely query it, as the temporary one is now invalid. Not something you discover on your next checkride…
While I’m not sure if this Mr. Puehler is the DPE in question and I don’t know the details, there was a case of an examiner who worked exclusively for one of the big ‘sausage factory’ flight schools that catered (almost) exclusively to Asian students. Apparently many of the checkrides never took place. The FAA became suspicious as they realized that this fine DPE claimed to have conducted 10 or more checkrides on the same day. Perhaps all these students then went on to work for PIA.
Me “yes I am feeling great”. Doc “OK then, lets issue you with the new certificate then”.
As they say in the US, “if you can breathe, then you can fly”.
To be clear, I have serious doubts about the usefulness of the whole medical business when it comes to private pilots. So I think private pilots self certifying would be the best approach. Possibly combined with easily accessible specialized consulting for aviation related issues.
We have done the “FAA medicals are worthless” stuff before, and it is nonsense. If anything, EASA will give you a Class 2 where the FAA might give you a Special Issuance Class 3 which will cost you €500 each time you do it, plus almost no AME in Europe will want to handle you because of the hassle.
It is certainly true that aero medicals (all of them, including Class 1 and its rest ECG) are – for a candidate who can walk into the AME’s office, has 2 eyes, 2 legs, a heartbeat, and (if male) a willy – worthless in predicting in-flight incapacitation. Especially as your GP records are either inaccessible (Germany) or not checked (probably everywhere, except initial Class 1 in the UK).
Could I therefore suggest that people don’t bad-mouth FAA medicals unless they have close-up and personal experience of both. Sure there have been “easy” FAA medicals but also there have been “easy” JAA (later EASA) medicals. Hungary was a special favourite for the latter… probably hundreds of currently serving pilots at top European airlines got their initial Class 1s in Hungary.
There are dodgy examiners in every walk of life. I don’t know anything about this guy but based on hanging around the FAA scene since 2004 or so, and seen quite a few things, I reckon 172driver above might be close to the truth. Also there have been cases of a DPE being blocked by the FAA from doing checkrides but he kept doing them.
Yes of course the successful test candidate should wonder when the paperwork doesn’t arrive but not everybody is proactive like that.
These things do happen, and they happen more or less everywhere, in any organisation where certificates are involved. See this thread from 2014 for example.
Get a job as a lecturer (a “professor” is the preferred title 
) at a university and look at how many of your students get essays written for them, for say €100. Obviously this works much better in humanities than in engineering… Guess who is writing these essays? Your staff colleagues! Well, some need the retirement income 
Currently the #1 spammer topic is fake passports. The #2 spammer topic is fake IELTS certificates
I’m not badmouthing anything but also no interest to argue with you
Obviously the elephant in the room is the clarity with which everybody knows that Private Pilot medicals have no effect on accident rate. This has been proved by UK self declaration and FAA LSA non-declaration, and is resisted by the AMEs only because of their vested interest. Is it therefore any wonder that some of them take the cash while attempting to add value in the form of a no hassle customer experience? It’s the only value they could add, and they know it.
My FAA 3rd Class experience has been relatively hassle free, and about $100. In comparison with my real medical care plus the requirement for self grounding, regardless of its thoroughness in exact compliance with protocol it’s totally valueless and pointless.
In contrast, my FAA Private Pilot practical test took from 8 AM to 3 PM with a break for lunch. It was very, very thorough, done in close compliance with the practical test standards, and was tailored in detail to match the plane and type of flying in which I was involved. The DPE had done every kind of flying from antiques at age 16 to being Carl Icahn’s Chief Pilot. He added a great deal of value because his function allowed it, he knew it and so he took it seriously.
It’s an interesting question if something like this could happen in Europe as well – and it’s probably even a country by country question.
At least in Germany it is hard to imagine that the CAA can revoke a license simply based on general irregularities with the examiner. If they can prove an irregularity with a specific examination it might be revoked (esp. if the candidate could have known that the examination was not taken up to normal standards), but a general “we have lost trust in this examiner and therefore everything he did in the last 10 years is void” is not possible under the German legal system.
It’s also an advantage of the EASA system that basically splits theory and practical skill test: If there are questions about the validity of the practical skill test it can be healed with quite low effort by just a check flight. No need to retrain the entire theory…
One issue is that the candidate has a reasonable expectation that the examiner is qualified, and has no way to due due diligence on that.
I know of one guy who ended up with an invalid FAA checkride on a Citation, and when he went to the US later for something else, he was faced with the substantial cost of re-doing it. He put lawyers on the job and the FAA honoured the original checkride.
But it is possible that the FAA takes the view that its DPEs are not FAA employees (which is true) and thus it cannot be responsible for them. This is like the current European system which uses both CAA employed examiners, and “industry” examiners. The latter are like the FAA DPEs, but – at least in the UK – the industry examiners pay hefty annual fees to the CAA, which makes the CAA responsible for them to some extent. AFAIK FAA DPEs don’t pay any annual fees to the FAA…
But there is no way for a test candidate to do due diligence on any examiner – FAA or EASA. Practically speaking it would really p1ss him off if you asked him to show his paperwork
I reckon Europe does pretty much what the FAA does. The FAA seems to deal with some of these cases quietly. Europe has also never AFAIK done anything about any bogus ATPL theory exam passes, reportedly available for €10k many years ago.
But also at a bigger level you get lots of things like e.g. the Irish CAA used to convert an FAA ATPL to a JAA ATPL with just a checkride (or something similar) and this went on for maybe a couple of years before JAA blocked it. None of these converted ATPLs were revoked
And practically speaking, a candidate isn’t going to be signed off by the FAA CFI/CFII as ready for the checkride unless he/she actually is ready. So unless the entire school was a fake, I can’t see a good reason to invalidate past checkrides.
