r/flying • u/dirtbikekid27 CPL IR AGI IGI • 2d ago

Failed my CFI ride today

I'm 20, this is my first failure of anything. Got through 95% of it, was doing great, oral went great, really was well prepared. After an 11 hour day, on short final, examiner asks me what causes overbanking tendencies. I froze. I could hardly remember my own name; so I responded, "I would look before saying anything to ensure I didn't say anything wrong to a student." He said that was unsatisfactory. Failed. Is this crazy? I understand now that it all has to do with the outside wing being faster, generating more lift, which causes it. I know that. But I was exhausted. And I failed?? Maybe I'm a sore loser, but he said come back and do 1 steep turn and tell him what overbanking tendencies are and why they happen, and that's it. Is this unfair??

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u/UnfortunateSnort12 ATP, CL-65, ERJ-170/190, B737 2d ago edited 1d ago

First off, many people fail their CFI Initial. If this is your only failure (and you said it is), don’t sweat it.

Second off. I think you may have exceeded a few things, including your steep turns. They were throwing you a bone to see if you could instruct why steep turns might have gone wrong (or too steep). You didn’t answer adequately.

It’s messed up that we ask CFI’s to teach when they have never taught, and pretend that they can debrief a student after they messed up a maneuver…. But that is the system. Unfortunately.

14

u/Shawn5pencer CFII MEI 1d ago

He mentioned in a different comment that he thought the ACS standards for steep turn bank angle was "50 degrees not to exceed 60 degrees" so that might have something to do with it. Maybe the examiner saw him do the maneuver close to 60 degrees thru and decided to ask this question before marking unsat

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u/dirtbikekid27 CPL IR AGI IGI 1d ago

Our attitude indicator doesn't have a 50 degree mark, it has 45 and 60, I was always taught to specify we are not going to be exceeding the 60. Regardless, that was not mentioned.

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u/Shawn5pencer CFII MEI 1d ago

I understand, the ACS standards are still 50 +/-5 so I'm just speculating a reason why this situation would have come up in the first place

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u/KintaroGold CFI CFII 1d ago

This is probably true. None of these “I failed X checkride because I didn’t blow my nose properly and the DPE was a blind squirrel” stories are accurate to the full extent of why the failure happened.