Good pilots/Bad pilots

[Mach E Avelli]

Con Pilot, I will certainly buy your book when it is published! It is rare in these forums to see stuff so well written.

Downunder in the Land of Oz, your old mate Biff had a soul mate. This guy (who we will call Bob to avoid a lawsuit) had been a First Officer on the B737 for over 20 years when I hired him. I should have known better (no one remains a F/O in this part of the world for that long) but at the time we were desperate for type-rated pilots due to over-rapid expansion.
Of course Bob wanted a command, and given our shortage, I agreed to let him have a go at it. Well, I won't fill the page here with his shortcomings, other than to say he got lost within ten minutes of commencing every simulator detail - even when the scenario was within his local area and had been carefully drawn on the whiteboard during briefing.

However, senior management really had the pressure on me to check him out, despite his Training Captain having grave reservations. So, despite the lack of a recommendation from his Trainer, after some 75 hours of supervised line training, I agreed to give him a check-to- line, on the basis that he would get one go and one go only (after such an amount of line training I thought that a fair challenge). Bob was quite antsy to get the check done and reckoned he could ace it.

An initial command check-to-line required the candidate to fly two sectors with the checkie in the right seat, then if he scrubbed up OK, four more sectors with a line F/O in the right seat and the checkie in the observer seat.

Now, this was post 9/11 and all the razzmatazz with reinforced cockpit doors had taken effect. We had strict requirements about cockpit entry in flight, and of course a requirement that if one pilot needed a toilet break, a F/A had to be on the flight deck. Standard stuff covered in all safety training and on the line and diligently observed by all (one never knows who is covertly doing surveillance in the cabin).

So, on the first sector, an hour into the flight, Bob needs a break. He is the 'Captain' right? So he departs the cockpit, leaving me alone. OF COURSE he has just handed me the perfect line check situation. I lock the door with the non-electronic lock (a split deadbolt system which on half lock could be overridden with a key) , call the senior F/A on interphone while he is in the toilet and wise her up to play along The pax are all geriatric and dozing anyway, so they are not likely to feel any alarm.
After his leak, Bob comes forward to the cockpit door but can't get in. Of course I have gone to 'sleep'. Well, you can imagine it all going pear-shaped from there. He panics, attempts to call me a couple of times, asks the F/A to do the same from the other interphone station (the only half intelligent thing he did in 20 years, I reckon), quickly gives up and rapidly advances to the thumb-sucking stage. Not quite in the foetal position, but almost - from the description I got later. No thought of how he could gain entry (the key was in the galley and the toilet wall was not reinforced, so could have been forced in a really dire situation).

After eventually letting him in, I said nothing other than "you won't do that again, will you?" We carried on to a very unstable approach and marginal landing at our destination. The return sector was no better.
Despite this, management still wanted him to have that command, but no way was I going to vacate the seat and let him fly with a F/O until after we headed overseas for a considerable amount of remedial simulator. Which did no good whatsoever. Eventually, I got rid of him by having a CASA Inspector observe his Instrument Rating renewal in the simulator, with another checkie running the panel to keep it impartial. I stayed well away in an attempt to put Bob at ease.
Apparently it was so bad that the Inspector called a halt to proceedings within 15 minutes because Bob was so totally disoriented during a simple departure. CASA pulled his IR. Whether for life or not, I don't know, but hope so. He was that bad.

So you ask, are there any bad pilots out there? Unfortunately yes. Fortunately, most airline check pilots have sufficient integrity to see that they do little harm, in the airline world at least. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous flight schools are all too willing to renew ratings for these characters and all too often, later we get to read of their demise in light aircraft.