Should Examiners have to tolerate abusive candidates?
A colleague of mine, who is also an experienced PPL(A) Examiner, was recently subjected to a vile onslaught of personal verbal abuse following their decision to terminate an exam flight mid point. The candidate had been hostile from the onset and had demonstrated a number of very poor and sometimes, even dangerous traits in their flying. The candidate was deemed to have failed purely on grounds of safety.
This led to an interesting discussion between us were we pondered the options open to Examiners in dealing with difficult or downright abusive disgruntled candidates. One of topics we discussed was the viability of a 'black list', where individuals who had verbally of physically threatened or abused and Examiner, or for that matter an Instructor, would be listed. Available for review only by Instructors or Examiners, this might afford them a 'heads up' before accepting a candidate for test and therefore avoid the kind of abuse mentioned at the top of this post.
I for one do not know if this is a widespread problem and would certainly be interested to hear from any other Examiners or Instructors who have had first hand experience. We all understand that a candidate presenting themselves for test is more than likely to be very nervous and possibly edgy but verbal abuse and threatening behaviour...? No thanks.
Best to all,
UDUD