This episode of Behind the Prop breaks down how pilots can recover from an FAA checkride disapproval. The hosts emphasize that disapprovals are common and don’t define a pilot’s future. They outline a clear path forward: understand the debrief, take ownership, and focus retraining on specific weaknesses. Confidence, proper preparation, and even taking time to reset before a retest are key. The core message is simple—one bad day doesn’t end your aviation journey. In many cases, it can make you a better, more disciplined pilot.
In this episode of Behind the Prop, Bobby Doss, Wally Mulhearn, and guest Jay Robinson tackle one of the most stressful moments in a pilot’s journey—receiving an FAA checkride disapproval—and, more importantly, how to recover from it. The conversation starts by normalizing the experience, emphasizing that disapprovals happen at every level of aviation and do not define a pilot’s ability or future.
Wally provides insight from the examiner’s perspective, explaining that a disapproval simply means a standard was not met on that day—not that the pilot is incapable. The group highlights that anxiety, small mistakes, or even external life factors can contribute to an unsatisfactory outcome.
The episode then shifts to actionable recovery steps. First, pilots must fully understand the debrief and letter of disapproval, ensuring they know exactly what needs to be corrected. Next comes ownership—accepting responsibility as pilot in command—followed by focused retraining that targets specific deficiencies rather than starting from scratch.
The hosts emphasize the importance of confidence, smart preparation, and even taking time to decompress before a retest. They also reinforce that most pilots successfully pass on the next attempt. Ultimately, the episode reframes disapproval as a powerful learning opportunity—one that can produce safer, more self-aware, and more resilient pilots.
00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear prop 773 Cherokee number two following twin traffic three mile final race straight in Runway two five join four mile final. This is behind the prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot Bobby Doss and his co host, major airline captain and designated pilot examiner Wally Mulhern. Now let's go behind the prop.
00:24
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:26
Wally Mulhearn
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:27
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. As a past applicant with a checkride pending with Wally Mulhern, I was scared to death. The anxiety was through the roof. I felt like I was prepared. But you're never prepared enough. And the worst thing that can happen is hearing the words that you were not satisfactory and that you didn't meet the standards. Unfortunately, that's the worst thing that can happen. It didn't happen to me that day. I did pass my checkride. But as much as a disapproval is disappointing, it's not the end of your flying journey. Tonight we have guest host again with us Jay Robinson. And we're talking about recovering after an FAA checkride disapproval. Welcome back to the show, Jay.
01:11
Jay Robinson
Thanks Bobby. Glad to be back.
01:13
Bobby Doss
Every pilot remembers their checkride day. I remember all of mine. It's been literally one year and like three days, maybe five days since I took my vision jet checkride. One of the most nerve wracking experiences for guy who didn't want to come home and tell everybody that works for him at a flight school that he fell a checkride. I was successful that day as well. But it is scary to enter the checkride and be concerned about failing or not getting the approval. Wally, you do it more than anybody else, meaning you take checkrides and administer check rides. I don't assume you have any anxiety on whether it's going to be a good day or bad day, but what's going through your mind? As you know, that young man or woman is sweating bullets on the other side of that table.
02:03
Wally Mulhearn
Well, you know, I, I, I do my best to put them at ease. And for our viewers, by the time this show airs, hopefully I'm going to have a new type rating on my pilot certificate. I technically start training on the 787 tomorrow. And so many people have said to me I've got a year and a half left before I turn 65. And the, I guess I'm supposed to turn stupid when I turn 65 and can't fly big jets anymore. But anyway, we won't get into that. And so many people have said why are you switching airplanes with just a year and A half to go. I mean life's good, you're flying to Hawaii on a nice wide body airplane and absolutely, it's good.
02:47
Wally Mulhearn
And probably the driving force for me to switch airplanes was first of all to prove that hey, a 63 year old can still do this. But the other thing is I, I believe I become a better examiner when I sit on the other side of the table and put myself under that stress. One week from today, I will be taking my first validation, my systems validation, which is the equivalent of the oral. I'll be doing that a week from today on the 787. Am I, yeah, I'm nervous. I'm kind of bouncing off the walls right now, you know, and I'm counting down the days. My head is in the books constantly and I'm trying to remember all these numbers and all these things about this airplane.
03:46
Wally Mulhearn
It's a little bit different from a, the airplane I currently fly, but at the end of the day, you know, and then after that I, I have a procedures validation, then I have a maneuvers validation and then the actual checkride, which is a line oriented evaluation. So again, I, I, I think it's good for me as someone who evaluates pilots to be evaluated and sit on the other side of the table. I'm not 100% sure what your exact question was, but you were talking about anxiety. So am I feeling the anxiety? Yeah, I am. Because you know, you walk in and they say, well you know, nobody's ever failed this. And I'm sitting there going, I'm going to be the first, I'm going to be the curve buster. I'm, I'm the guy.
04:42
Wally Mulhearn
And then, you know, I, I know my system's out on the triple seven. I went into it, I thought I'm not going to pass this thing. And then you know, it, you hit submit and it comes back with a passing grade. You go oh, okay, maybe I do know this. So you know, so part of it is that, you know, how does this affect my ability to do general aviation checkrides? And I, I think me reminding myself what the anxiety feels like. I know the applicants are under anxiety. I see them, I see some, you know, people handle it in different ways. They, some of them, you can physically see it on them. You can, you can hear their voice shaking. So you know, we start by just trying to calm the applicant down.
05:33
Wally Mulhearn
And that's why we've done so many shows about checkride preparation. You know, the applicant you say, okay, let's. Let's go ahead and into Iacra so you can sign the application. And they log in it and realize their password expired this morning. And so here they are, they're trying to reset their password, and they can't remember their mother's maiden name or the mascot of their junior high school. And you see the anxiety level going higher and higher. And so I'm over there as psychologists saying, okay, calm down, it's okay. Walk back up from the ledge. We're going to be okay here. So the more you can take care of that kind of stuff, just the better off you are. Yeah.
06:24
Bobby Doss
It's funny, there's nothing in the ACS standards about being able to log into icra, but maybe they should add that in future releases.
06:30
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah.
06:31
Bobby Doss
Jay, you've worked around flight schools for multiple decades now, and you've seen your share of success and disapprovals and discontinuous, as I'm sure you have to see and feel that there's this understanding the disapproval, there's the recovering from it, and then there's dominating that retest. Right. I'm sure there's many good stories, many bad stories. Why don't you walk us through at a high level some of your experiences related to the disapproval.
07:03
Jay Robinson
Yeah, absolutely. So I think the first thing for anybody to know if a disapproval does end up being the result of your checkride is that you're not alone. I think it's hard to internalize that sometimes, but I guarantee you are certainly not the first, nor will you be the last person to get disapproved on any checkride you're ever taking. And I mean, Wally, I'm sure you can attest to this, too, that disapprovals happen at every level. Even somebody doing an ATP check ride, if they have an off day, disapproval may be the result. And even really good pilots, whether it be a checkride disapproval, or just that day, that flight, that trip, everybody's got a story about sometime that they just didn't quite perform at the level that they're used to, and things happen.
07:49
Jay Robinson
So I think just number one is understanding that you're not alone in this. And then beyond that, I'd say accepting that some of those natural feelings are going to come through when you get that news. It's very normal. And I'd honestly be more concerned if you didn't feel anything. But, you know, you may feel embarrassed or frustrated or mad. It's a disappointing thing. It's going to be reality. But just start telling yourself as soon as that happens, like, hey, we're going to get through this. This is not the end of the world. And that really, at the end of the day in the ball game that is aviation, disapproval is just another learning event for you. It's not who you are as a pilot. It doesn't define you. It's a thing that happened that we're all going to be able to overcome.
08:35
Jay Robinson
And then I would say from there, it all goes into just understanding and disapproval. So again, Wally, you're kind of the expert here. I'll pass this back to you. What does a disapproval actually mean?
08:47
Wally Mulhearn
Well, it simply means that during this time frame, this day, you did not meet a standard on maybe as few as one task. You know, you may have messed up one maneuver on the checkride. And, and by definition, that is a disapproval. You know, my experience as a examiner or someone evaluating pilots started at the airline level. I was hired a long time ago and I was a second officer or a flight engineer on the 727. And I was hired by the training department of Continental Airlines to come in and be an instructor. So I instructed second officers. And for those of you who don't know what second officer is, basically you're the third pilot on the flight deck. You're basically managing all the systems. You don't have a control wheel in front of you.
09:46
Wally Mulhearn
You don't get to really control the airplane, but you're the one managing the electricity, you're managing the hydraulics, the fuel, the pneumatics. You're doing pretty much all the performance stuff. So you are the third pilot. As airplanes became more automated, the, you know, the, it was deemed that the need for a second officer wasn't there. And so that's kind of where we are now. So anyway, so again, I started out as an instructor, as a second officer, and then I became a check airman, which meant I was able to give proficiency checks every. For our second officers. They had to come in once a year, and we would administer a proficiency check and we would go through all the, you know, the emergency stuff. The engine out, two engine out, manual gear extension, loss of all generators. We would go through all that.
10:41
Wally Mulhearn
And then the next level of that was to become an apd, which meant an aircrew program designee, which is kind of like a dpe. On the airline level, I was able a, a second officer. Again, that's what the airlines called them, but technically you were A flight engineer. And a flight engineer is a separate pilot certificate. I have a ATP certificate in my pocket. I have a CFI certificate in my pocket. I have a grant instructor certificate in my pocket. And yes, I still carry around my flight engineer certificate. Turbojet flight engineer. And so I was able to issue those and it became an FAA event. We called it the rating ride. So I was able to do that. I was a fairly new captain one time on the 737. This would have been about 1999, 2000, somewhere in that timeframe.
11:40
Wally Mulhearn
So 26 years ago, I walked on the flight deck of an airplane and the first officer sitting in the right seat and I introduced myself and I stuck out my hand to shake his hand. He turned around, he says, yeah, I know you. You busted me on a check ride. And my heart sank. I thought, oh no, this is going to be a horrible three, four, however many day trip. We were about to go fly together and I said, oh. And I didn't have words. I did not know what to say. And he goes, he says, probably the best day of my life. And I said, interesting. Really? He said, yeah. He said, you really made me go home and reevaluate some things and kind of get my life together. And, you know, he did not save my pilot career.
12:39
Wally Mulhearn
I don't know what was going on in his life, but he told me, he says, because of that, I really went home and reevaluated, got my life together. So, and I'm not saying this toot my own horn, but there were probably some things going on personally in his life that were causing him to not be able to perform well that day. And we got along great. We had a wonderful trip. I mean, went out and had dinner on the layovers and stuff. It was a great trip. So there was an example of a, a bad situation. And, and quite frankly, I did not remember the checkride at all. And I. It's not that I had so many unsats that they all ran together because by and large, I mean, the percentage of unsatisfactory check rides isn't very high, but especially at that level.
13:38
Wally Mulhearn
So there was an example of gentlemen taking a negative and turning it into a positive.
13:47
Bobby Doss
Do you have any common themes or maybe common root causes that maybe cause most disapprovals, Wally, that you've been a part of?
13:57
Wally Mulhearn
You know, it's not my job to come up with why. It's my job to come up with what. And, and the. What is today you did not meet the Standard. In the back of my mind, do I think sometimes it's poor instruction? Yeah, absolutely. Is it sometimes just the applicant not having their ducks in a row on that day, during that time frame? Absolutely. But, you know, you'll hear things like, we'll talk about, I'll say, okay, let's do a power off stall and they just reach up there and pull the power off and pull the nose up and recover. And, and you know, I might say, well, what about the, you know, the clearing maneuver? How about setting up for a stabilized descent? And they'll look over and they'll say, well, I've never done it that way.
15:07
Wally Mulhearn
And I don't know, you know, CFIs, you're, your applicants will throw you under the bus. They really will. Because I'll hear all the time. Well, my CFI said this, and I don't know if it's true or not, but I will know that a lot of times I hear that. So common themes. I, you know, I would say that probably. And I don't, I, I don't, I, I keep track of results of checkrides, but I, I don't really break it down to what type of checkrides. I could, but I haven't. So I may be speaking out of turn, but I would say I have a higher unsatisfactory rate on instrument checkrides, more so than private commercial or add ons.
16:02
Bobby Doss
So I guess my follow up to that would be is it knowledge or is it skill? Like, is it tactile stick and rudder stuff or is it knowledge?
16:12
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, it's, I would say it's knowledge, but it's, it doesn't happen usually in the ground portion. It happens in the air.
16:22
Bobby Doss
Got you.
16:23
Wally Mulhearn
You know, and a lot of it is, I'll just say it vor navigation. Just, you know, and I know the VRs are going away and that's kind of the attitude people. Well, they're going away, so we don't need to do it. Well, go down to Guatemala. You might be doing a VR arc approach into whatever Runway they have down there. So is something that you still need to know how to do and you know, you think that, well, maybe the instructor isn't extremely confident in their abilities, so maybe their instructor wasn't. And so therein lies part of a problem. And you know, we don't do it enough. You know, back in my Day, that's. The VOR was like the. Than the. The Cadillac of navigation. And so we did it all the time.
17:29
Bobby Doss
It was like a was approach in today's world, huh?
17:32
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, you were constantly intercepting radials and so forth, intersecting, intercepting airways, flying airways. That's. That's just the way it was. So we were probably, you know, at that, using that skill. We were probably better back then.
17:56
Bobby Doss
Okay, so the bad days happened. Now what. I mean, my career is not over. We talked through part one of recognizing I've been disapproved. Part two is wrapping up the bad day. Jay, talk through us, talk us through what we do now that we've had the disapproval.
18:16
Jay Robinson
Absolutely. And so to me, it's all about, okay, we've had what is a bad day. How do we not turn it into a worse day than it needs to be? And to me, the first real step there is really taking to heart and having a good professional debrief with the dpe. And really, a good debrief consists of a few things. I would say, if at all possible, have your instructor present in that debrief. Most DPEs I know, Wally certainly is, and most of the other DPEs that we work with on a regular basis not only allow, but encourage the instructor to be present during that debrief so that they get all the same information that you do and have all the context that you have.
18:56
Jay Robinson
And then really beyond that, it's making sure that you do not leave that room confused, not understanding what your disapproval was for. So it's really important that you pay attention during that debrief. Ask the DPE to clarify anything that you don't really understand about why you were disapproved on any certain task. You know, really try to identify the exact part of whatever maneuver or scenario is unsatisfactory just so that you know exactly what you are trying to walk out of that room that day and have your instructor help you fix. Beyond that, I would say, really, when you collate that feedback with your instructor, you want to try to figure out, is this a knowledge gap? Is this a kind of skill execution gap? Did I just have a bad day? Did I make a bad decision?
19:50
Jay Robinson
Really, really what it boils down to is just making sure that you get all the information you possibly can, because at the end of the day, you cannot fix what you don't understand. So that's kind of really the first thing that you're going to do after the. The unfortunate news is delivered. Is have that debriefing with the DPE and your instructor. And then part of that debriefing is going to be receiving what's called a letter of disapproval. That is the official FAA record of what was disapproved. What about it was unsatisfactory. And it's also going to define what you have to do when you come back in for that retest. Once you have that letter in hand, it's really important that you keep track of that.
20:34
Jay Robinson
And in fact above and beyond that, if you don't feel like you understand 100% already, ask the question of your DPE. What is satisfactory performance when I come back to finish up this exam. This is a great segue back to you, Wally. When you have somebody come back from a disapproval, you know, what does a great retest look like to you?
20:58
Wally Mulhearn
Well, you know, getting back to, you know, one thing I will say to the applicant, you know, as we're debriefing, I mean they know before we even get back in the debriefing room that things that the ride was unsatisfactory. But I, I've been known to tell them to pull out their weather app, whatever they use, pull up and, and tell me what time sunrise is tomorrow. And, and they'll look at me kind of crazy and they'll say it's at 6:07 tomorrow morning. And I will say okay, the sun will come up again. The sun will come up tomorrow. Okay. And I don't know, it's maybe a little melodrama dramatic but something that I do. So during the briefing, the pre checkride brief. We tell them that there are three possible outcomes to a checkride. First one is a satisfactory issue you this pilot certificate.
22:09
Wally Mulhearn
We talk about the temporary being good for 120 days. But the second possible outcome is a disapproval notice which means the checkride was unsatisfactory. So in that case, one or more of the tasks did not meet the standards. And I will tell them that first of all, you have 60 days from that unsat to come back and finish the checkride or retake the checkride. Now if it's 61 days, is that okay? Yeah, that's okay. But if it's 61 days, you're going to have to start all over at the very beginning. As long as you do it within that 60 day window, you are only to an extent will only be retested on those things that were unsatisfactory or the things that did not that we didn't get to maybe we didn't finish everything.
23:09
Wally Mulhearn
Now, having said that, let's say we have an applicant that I'm just going to pick three things. Stalls, steep turns, and short field landings. Okay, so let's say you come back to me and we have to do those three maneuvers. Well, to get out to the practice area, we've got to go take off and we've got a taxi. So if on taxi we taxi the airplane into a ditch because were texting somebody, it's not like, well, I wasn't evaluating you on that. So that's just fine today. So don't think you're off the hook on all the other things. You still have to perform those maneuvers to a satisfactory level. And it is at the discretion of the examiner to ask for other things. Now, will I ask for other maneuvers?
24:08
Wally Mulhearn
Not really, but there are times where maybe if all we're doing is a couple of landings, maybe a short field landing and a forward slip to a landing, maybe I may have the applicant fly around the pattern one time and just do a normal takeoff and a normal landing just to kind of get them in the groove, give them a little bit of warm up time. Now, does a unsatisfactory have to come back to the same examiner? Absolutely not. You can go to any examiner. Now, I do feel like there's an advantage to going back to the same examiner. And it's mostly, you know each other. Now, you may not like the examiner. Okay, you may say, that guy's a tor. That girl's a total jerk. I don't ever want to be in the same airplane with that person. And that's your prerogative.
25:08
Wally Mulhearn
You're able to find a different examiner for that. So again, I've been rambling and I'm not even 100% sure what your question was.
25:21
Bobby Doss
You covered it all. You cover, you covered it all. The.
25:24
Wally Mulhearn
Okay.
25:25
Bobby Doss
Next thing that I'm thinking about is, you know, I get calls from parents, friends of kid, friends of mine who have kids that are training or whatever. And the dad will call me and they'll say, man, my son busted just because he couldn't do a steep turn. Is that, is that common? You know, they're fighting for their child. You know, they love their child. I get it. And I said, well, let me check and I'll call you back. And we actually are collecting the disapproval letters from our students that they'll share them with us just so we have them on the record and we know how to help them. Prepare better. And normally that checkride that's disapproved because of that one steep turn that didn't go so good, has like 37 bullets. Right?
26:04
Bobby Doss
It's not just the steep turn I think we remember, or in these debriefs we remember what we want or what we can. I think this is where you have to decompress a little bit, take a deep breath. Like Wally says, the sun will come up tomorrow. This is not the end all be all to your pilot career, but try to understand what really did go wrong and better the next time around. I would say in eight years of owning a flight school, I've seen someone fail twice, same ride twice, less than two hands fulls, like less than 10 times. It does seem pretty reasonable that you can come back and recover from that one bad day you had. And I think they're bad days. I could sit here and tell stories for days. I'm sure we've told some of them.
26:56
Bobby Doss
Wally, you did a checkride for a kid that I had no question was going to pass first try. And they were told to turn right on a taxiway and they turned left. I mean, that's like unimpossible to recover from. I would think when you're going the wrong direction, you had one guy take off or try to take off with like a third of the Runway remaining. Got. I'm sure the anxiety was through the roof and they were going to go one way and they tried to go the other way, and you weren't going to let them give it a go on that one third of the Runway. Right. You know those are brain farts. Those are bad days. Right.
27:33
Bobby Doss
I don't know how else to describe it, but once that is consumed or you can regroup from that, you probably are going to be able to pass the next go around. You're going to have two really freaking bad days. Probably no guarantees, but once the dust settles, it's time to get back to work, get a little retraining, and get back in the quote unquote queue to get ready. So once I have regrouped and I've confessed, I've corrected, I'm ready to conquer. Jay, where do we go from here?
28:06
Jay Robinson
Yeah, absolutely. So you kind of hit the nail on the head with the framework that we like to talk about. This going from the end of the bad day to successfully obtaining that pilot certificate or rating on the next go, really, we kind of break it down into three parts that Bobby just named and the first part of it really is to confess. And really, to me, that means to own it, accept responsibility for the things that you didn't do to a satisfactory level. You really have to have that PIC mindset when you are pilot in command of that aircraft, anything that happens during that flight is your responsibility. So owning that failure, accepting that reality and saying, okay, I'm going to fix this and I'm going to move on is really that first step. It's confess.
28:52
Jay Robinson
And that's one of those things that separates pilots who make a mistake and can grow from pilots who kind of plateau and never really go anywhere. Once we've got it all out there, we've talked about it, then it's time to come up with our correction. And really what's important here that I like to get across to everybody, is that you're not going to fix a disapproval by just totally resetting and flying a ton more. You're going to fix a disapproval by training smarter. And what that really means is we took those really good notes during the debrief and now we're going to sit down with our cfi, really focus in on those unsatisfactory areas of the checkride, and just lean on our core properties of training and retraining, which to me are just trying to eliminate a lot of the uncertainty from the process.
29:43
Jay Robinson
So the things that I tend to really recommend is we want to use our established procedures for doing things. I think that takes a lot of the guesswork out of the situation, especially now that we're being reevaluated on something that we maybe didn't do as well the first time, I'd say during the retraining process, and this is honestly a good habit, flying anytime, is to really verbalize what you're doing. It gives you a chance, number one, to say, maybe what I just said doesn't actually make sense. It gives your instructor a chance to understand your mindset and maybe crack the code to what is causing you to struggle with that certain task. And then really, you just want to build that repetition to a point where you've done it enough times to feel comfortable and really help take away some of that anxiety.
30:35
Jay Robinson
So again, we want to correct, but we want to correct with precision. And focused in on those unsatisfactory tasks is the key. And then last but not least, before you go back in, I think all of us as pilots are somewhat type A and very tempted to really go full throttle until the very last minute. But I would say a big part of this, that last conquering step of really being ready to take on that re examination is just giving yourself a little bit of time right at the end. I would say in an ideal world, if you could give yourself at least one day, you know, before that checkride, at some point, it's not a training day. You're not cramming and studying. You're not trying to prep.
31:21
Jay Robinson
You want to really give yourself that opportunity to let some of those nerves melt away, rebuild that confidence, regain some perception and clarity, and not really just be studying all the way from wall to wall from disapproval to your RE attempt. Because at the end of the day, confidence going back into that reattempt is not believing that you're going to be perfect. It's knowing that you can recover from any of those small mistakes you might make. So that's kind of the point A to point B. And I'll kind of segue it back to Wally, what should an applicant be expecting on the day of their retest? And you covered this a little bit. But tell us about kind of the difference between that initial check ride and what to expect when they come back in for a retest.
32:09
Wally Mulhearn
Well, let me. Let me just back up and kind of comment on a couple of comments that have been made. I took a couple of notes. Bobby talked about the applicant's parents calling up and saying, well, he messed up steep turns. And then you look at the notice of disapproval, and there's a little bit more than the steep turns. Well, that's a nice reason for having your CFI in there on the debrief. The cfi. Cause you're emotionally spent, probably. And you're maybe not hearing. Maybe you're. As the DP is talking, you're talking about, oh, my gosh, how am I going to tell my girlfriend? Or how am I going to tell my parents? Whatever. Maybe your focus is just kind of out of whack. So maybe having another set of ears in there is a really good thing.
33:09
Wally Mulhearn
But, Jay, you said something about having a day going back to my second officer instructor days. This is years ago. We found that. And getting an airline job and being a second officer on a 727. Back in the day, we had to know how many rivets were on each wing. And I'm being a little bit facetious, but we probably had a lot of overkill on things that we expected our pilots to know, and we kind of realized that probably doesn't make us better pilots. But having said that, you used to get. I believe you got. We got five SIM sessions and Then a check ride. And usually you would have the same instructor for Sim 1, 2, 3, another instructor for Ride 4 and 5, and then, then your check ride.
34:08
Wally Mulhearn
Well, what I would find is when I would pick up a Student For Ride 4 and 5, they would come in on Ride 4 and they would just be an emotional wreck because they've been in ground school for a couple weeks. They'd done cockpit procedures, trainers for a week, they'd done sims. They haven't really taken any time off. And I used to give them an assignment. So we had ride four. Tomorrow we're going to come back. Tomorrow is like the recommendation ride, if you will. Okay, you're, you do well, tomorrow we're going to send you in for the check ride. This is back when a movie came out years ago and you can look this up and figure out what year I'm talking about. I can't even tell you. Movie called Forrest Gump had Tom Hanks in it.
34:59
Wally Mulhearn
I think pretty much everybody has seen Forrest Gump. And it was that summer I used to tell my students, I said, here's your homework. I want you to go back to the hotel and I want you to go find a movie theater and I want you to go watch this new movie called Forrest Gump. And they would look, you know, this is somebody who maybe didn't do extremely well today and they would look at me like I had corn growing out of my ears. You want me to do what? You don't want me to go study loss of all generators? I said, you've been studying loss of all generators for a month and you've hit a wall. What I want you to do is I want you to go home or find a movie theater, decompress for a couple hours and watch this movie.
35:46
Wally Mulhearn
It's, it's one of my favorite all time movies. And if you don't walk away from Forrest Gump kind of thinking of life maybe just a little bit different. And they would come back the next day. I'd say, did you go see the movie? Oh, yeah, I love the part about running across or whatever. You know, we would talk about the movie, we'd brief a little bit, we'd go on the simulator. Never failed, never failed that. Every time they came back and they did really well, I say to a lot of students, applicants, all right, you're in a sim, in a real airplane and a major malfunction happens. What's the first thing you should do? And the answer is breathe Take a breath. Okay. All right, let's attack this now. Let's attack it. But, but take a couple of seconds and breathe.
36:46
Wally Mulhearn
And that's exactly what you're saying is decompress a little bit. You know, it's you don't have to come back tomorrow. You got 60 days. Okay, we got 60 days. And let me go back and talk about that 60 day timeframe. That 60 days does not extend any the other expirables. For instance, if you had a, a knowledge test result that is going to expire the end of this month, well, that is your limiting factor. Or the airplane has annual that is about to expire. All those things still need to be within their respective timeframes. So again, I rambled and I'm not even 100% sure again what the question was.
37:36
Jay Robinson
No, you nailed it, Wally. And that was a great story.
37:39
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah.
37:39
Bobby Doss
This is kind of your topic since you're the DP that unfortunately has to be the one that delivers the disapprovals. You know, Jay and I did have a conversation with one of our flight instructors right. As I was leaving the flight school today. And the whole message was a little bit of yin and yang about we're not looking for perfection. I think too often instructors and individuals are looking to be perfect. But the ACS does not say we have to be perfect, right?
38:07
Wally Mulhearn
No.
38:07
Bobby Doss
And I don't think that failing or being disapproved is the end of the world. And it's about coming back and conquering at the next go around and being professional about it. You want to be a professional pilot for the rest of your life, you're going to have to be professional. And shaking that DP's hand and putting your chin up and going out there and kicking butt is what it's all about. And it's what we do every day and try and train for that. So if you have that disapproval, if you're one of the unlucky ones who had a bad day, it's just one day. The sun will come up tomorrow. Let's run through our newly found love for lightning round Q and A when we have a guest on the show and let's ask some questions. Really quick.
38:48
Bobby Doss
First word that comes to mind when you hear the word disapproval. Jay, Go.
38:53
Jay Robinson
It's a disappointment. It's going to happen, but it's natural and you'll get over it.
38:59
Bobby Doss
Is a pilot with one disapproval normal or concerning Wally?
39:04
Wally Mulhearn
Oh, very normal.
39:06
Bobby Doss
No question. Both of you, what's the biggest mistakes Pilot make the day after a disapproval.
39:15
Jay Robinson
I'd say in this day and age, it's probably posting it on social media or getting into too much hanger talk and really just psyching themselves out instead of just collecting themselves and working on a plan to recover.
39:28
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, Wally, I'd go with that.
39:32
Bobby Doss
Yeah. I think it's the inflammation of what happened, right? It's the oh, he was such an asshole, and blah, blah. And I doubt that ever happens. I mean, I've heard some fairly derogatory things about some very benign DPEs like DPs. I've never even seen, like, raise an eyebrow. They screamed at me and I'm like, really? I don't know that I've ever heard them raise their voice, but I would even say the word, just, sorry, sir, you were disapproved. Probably sounds like they were screaming because you just didn't want to hear what they had to say.
40:06
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah.
40:06
Bobby Doss
Retest too soon or wait too long, which is a bigger risk.
40:10
Wally Mulhearn
Wally, I'm gonna say. I mean, this kind of almost counteracts what we said earlier, but there is a sweet spot. I think waiting too long is a bigger risk. You don't want to probably not this afternoon, probably not tomorrow. And it just all depends on what the reasoning was and also the psyche of the applicant. I know at the airline level, when we have a disapproval, we ask the pilot, okay, are any outside influences affecting your ability to perform? And you sometimes, you know, most of the time pilots are gonna say, no, it's. It was me. But if you got something going on at home or in your personal life, you know, maybe it's time to take a step back, take care of that and then come back.
41:06
Wally Mulhearn
But I, I, you know the old analogy of, you know, if you get kicked off the horse, get right back on. I'm kind of that mindset.
41:18
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Speaking of that life stuff, I, I think we don't probably talk about this enough, but we all three have wives. We all have lives. We've got, most of us have kids, we've got pets. Life happens. You know, you could.
41:35
Wally Mulhearn
There.
41:35
Bobby Doss
Somebody might have a cat that dies that would be devastated. I'm not a cat guy, but I can recognize that you are devastated if you had a cat and the cat died. If one of my dogs dies, I'm gonna have a hard time with it. It might not be the best thing to do is go and take a checkride. And then I've seen people literally total an airplane and pass a CFI checkride the next day. Like, it's not for everyone. It just isn't. So do that self reflection. Okay, a few more questions. Fill in the blank. This one's for you, Wally. A pilot who owns their failure is a pilot who blanks.
42:12
Wally Mulhearn
Succeeds.
42:13
Bobby Doss
No question.
42:14
Wally Mulhearn
Succeeds. Yeah, I.
42:16
Bobby Doss
If I could tell people, be accountable and like, really be accountable and own anything that you're involved in. That is one attribute that I respect immensely. To say that he failed me or she failed me just because I didn't sump a sump. Well, I mean, that's a reason to fail. But that's probably not why you failed. It could be, but take accountability. You know what? I screwed up. It rained. I didn't sump the pumps, I didn't sump the sumps, and I should have. That could have killed me and the examiner. That's ownership. That means a lot to me.
42:51
Wally Mulhearn
All right.
42:51
Bobby Doss
From an examiner's chair. Wally, what makes you root for a candidate on a retest?
42:59
Wally Mulhearn
Someone who will own it. I've. I've had so many applicants apologize to me, you know, and say, man, I am really sorry I gave you such a poor ride last time. And I hate to use that phrase I gave you, but you know, and you know, I say, look, I'm on your side. I am on Team Bob or whatever. Let's go out and do this. I know you can do it. I mean, you were signed off, you did it for your cfi, and I understand that. So let's go do it.
43:35
Bobby Doss
All right, Jay, this is for you. One habit every pilot should build before their first checkride.
43:41
Jay Robinson
So we've talked a ton about accountability. So I'll give you all a second one, because that was going to be my answer. But I would say consistency is very important. Building before your first checkride. If we're winging it every time we go out to try to do something, that's going to make it all the more difficult. So getting consistent, doing things by the book and doing things by the procedures.
44:02
Bobby Doss
Wrap up question. Both of you give me one or two sends as tops. Does a disapproval ever make someone a better pilot?
44:11
Wally Mulhearn
Absolutely.
44:13
Bobby Doss
Yeah.
44:14
Jay Robinson
A hundred percent agree that a disapproval has the ability to do that, if nothing else. You know, you told a great story earlier, Wally, about that. That one gentleman kind of really going back, recollecting himself and having things beyond even his aviation career potentially improve because of that disapproval. But I've seen it time and time again. Plenty of people who have work for me as CFIs over the years that have disapprovals and they tell those stories and if nothing else, it helps them help their students become better pilots. So 100%, yes.
44:45
Bobby Doss
I have interviewed probably a thousand CFI applicants in the last eight years and I will tell you that an applicant that comes to me with two, three failures, disapprovals and owns them and tells me what they learned is as equally possible to work at United Flight Systems as any other CFI who hasn't had one single failure. Sometimes that failure probably does make that applicant better. They know how to react, they know how to coach, they know how to teach better, and they probably know how to recover from a disapproval, which is a very important thing in my opinion.
45:24
Wally Mulhearn
And also, you can be a huge influence on your students if you are willing to let them know about that. I mean, I tell people now, I knock on wood. I haven't failed a checkride, but I failed many knowledge tests. I failed my private. I think I failed my private once. I failed my instrument twice. I failed my commercial once. So I was into three knowledge tests, written tests into my pilot career, and I think I was three for seven, you know, And I mean, you look at that and you go, wow. But then I kind of learned a trick of how to study for them. But I'll tell people all the time, yeah, I failed it. I failed it.
46:17
Wally Mulhearn
You know, an apple comes to me with a 98 on a written test and I'm like, wow, I'm not sure I could do that today.
46:26
Bobby Doss
Exactly. Talk to your instructor if you do have a disapproval. Get some more coaching. Get a little bit of a pump up, get ready for the retake. As Wally said, maybe don't wait 60 days or 59 days. You're still in the game. You're going to get to keep flying. Wally just told you about some of his failures in written knowledge tests. It's not the end of the world. If you are listening to behind the Prop and you have a setback story, please share it with us. Send me an email. Bobby Behindtheprop.com what was the bounce? What saved you? What made you a better pilot? What'd you learn from it? And as always, fly safely and stay behind the prop.
47:06
Speaker 2
Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@brave.theprop.com behind the prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co host is Wally Mulhern. The show is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to replace actual flight instruction. Thanks for listening. And remember, fly safe.