Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Yes, I understand your difficulty. You really shouldn't dwell on your incident. Just put it behind you and concentrate on being the best and most professional airline pilot you can be from here on. If flying was easy, anyone could do it. Don't worry about your incident, it has woken you up and galvanised you, which is valuable in itself.
In the Apollo 13 film, a government representative says words to the effect that this is going to be a nightmare, but Gene Kranz (the mission director), says "with respect sir, I believe this will be our finest hour", i.e. we can prove that we can deal with this serious emergency.
In the future if ever trying for another airline, you will have to be honest and open. Many questions are along the lines of: 'any flying incidents ?' or 'have you ever made a mistake ?' You could use this incident to explain what happened and how you learned early on in your career not to be complacent, (not saying you were), and how you learned that even experienced pilots can suffer setbacks or unexpected events.
Go on to explain how you got over it and how you approach the job now, and that it has given you a useful training point which allows you to deal with the unexpected better. Motorcyclists reach a dangerous time about 6 months after passing their CBT and their test. They start to relax and think they have it all sussed, only to have a close shave one day because they weren't paying full attention. You might be in a similar place flying-wise.
Of course you might have a problem if you put this on an application form in that you might never get an interview in the first place. You might be able to find a way to get past that while still being open and honest during your actual interview.
Any airline panel worth their salt should understand that humans and pilots are not immune from making mistakes; It is how pilots deal with that - 'mitigate' is a popular buzz-word - which makes the difference. There is no such person as a pilot who has never made a mistake.
Good luck.
Thank you for your feedback. What you say completely resonates as i ponder upon the incident as a whole. I just can't help but to think that, if given a job opportunity for a new airline and they were to select between candidate A (no line check fail) candidate B (line check fail on record) surely they would pick the former. It's just a very hard pill to swallow that this will be in my permanent record/resume. It's even more frustrating that, out of the hundreds of flights that i have done that have went smoothly, this issue HAD to happen on that particular day which happened to be a line check.