So why does the system bother with examiners at all then? Why not just get the hour-building kid who just qualified to teach students to assess your competence to do something that you've been doing for the last 20 years, and take that privilege away from you on a whim?
......
Well why stop there? If I made it to the end of my PPL course alive, and did a few take-offs and arrivals (some of which might be described as landings), why both with a checkride?
BW
You are doing something that I wouldn't expect of you - repositioning a sensible alternative view into an absurdity.
The position I think we should be debating is the EASA/JAA vs FAA/ICAO one of the role of instructors vs examiners and the requirements for currency. I am qualified under both, although I have only a little ad-hoc instructing experience.
My characterisation of the two models is as follows:
Under the FAA, there are effectively only 2 "ranks" - Designated Pilot Examiners and Instructors. A DPE is needed for only one type of event - the
initial issuance of a Certificate or Class Rating. Absolutely every other requirement for a pilot's revalidation or renewal or differences training can be met by a plain vanilla CFI (with CFII and MEI privileges as required). A CPL/IR ME could have stopped flying 10 years ago, and a plain CFI-II-MEI could sign off his complete and full set of privileges without any reference to an examiner or the FAA or any paperwork other than logbook endorsements.
The instructor has a vital role in assessing competence. The FAA I think would say a greater role (albeit less formal) than a DPE. The endorsement an instructor gives a candidate is taken as a formal assessment that the candidate meets the skills, experience and knowledge standards for the privileges he seeks. The DPE's role is to perform a "check" that this is the case, but it is emphasised that a single check ride can only test so much, and that the instructor is exercising a significant responsibility in endorsing a candidate and giving this message to the DPE and the FAA. In the award of new qualifications, there are thus two independent "gates" (the instructor and the DPE). In the revalidation/renewal, it is entirely down to the instructor's assessment.
I happen to think the system works well, its virtue is an obvious simplicity and practicality and, most importantly, a safety outcome as good or better than the best European countries. Of course, there is some small risk that a "bad egg" gets through, but the safety record suggests this is more than mitigated by avoiding the vast unproductive bureaucracy associated with flight training and testing in Europe, and consequently making flight training more accessible and less expensive. By less expensive, interestingly, that does not apply to instruction. The typical US rate is $50/hr flight and ground time. A much fairer rate than the pittance many European instructors work for. But, the avoidance of the huge regulatory cost makes flight training cheaper overall. Basically every penny you spend goes on training and practically none on the overheads and approvals needed in Europe.
Conversely, a "flight instructor" in Europe sits at the bottom of a multi-layered hierarchial pyramid, with NAA inspectors and examiners at the top, senior examiners and examiner examiners below them, then normal examiners, then heads of training and CFIs and then finally the "plain" instructor (with the "restricted" instructors below that), who are basically empowered to execute some training roles in an FTO and that's it. There is no comparison between that role and an FAA CFI, who has all of the privileges of European examiners in the realm of revalidation and renewal.
The hierarchy and multiple layers of paperwork checking may appeal to a certain kind of mentality, but I think it achieves nothing relative to the US model for flight training and safety.
brgds
421C