As Adam said, a checkride failure is common. Two isn’t great but can be overcome in your career. Three and you’re going to have a hard time proving it wasn’t a pattern.
I didn’t have any checkride failures. I took one phase at a time, one evaluation at a time and did my best. I’m a perfectionist and stubborn so I studied until I could recite the oral exam guide. I chair flew every maneuver 5 times perfectly before I hopped in the airplane. I prepared the best that I could and controlled what I could control. It worked for me.
Hello, this is a very late addition to this conversation haha. A common theme I’ve been noticing is extremely confident students that never have really had to study to do well. And that they have an awakening that that’s not how it works at ATP and to become a pilot. I would consider myself to fall into that category, and as a 15 almost 16 year old senior in highschool with a GPA around 3.75, who has never um, appreciated school. Do you guys have any incites on how to grow in the skill of studying, and how to maybe not hate it? I believe this will be a good skill to grow in as I go into my first year of college and will benefit me greatly to have before starting ATP later.
Great question but I wish I had a great answer but sadly I don’t.
I was one of those people who did really well in school and most everything came fairly easy. Problem was when it didn’t I quickly discovered I was really bad at studying. What helped me was taking notes, LOTS OF NOTES. I’m one of those people that when I write things down I retain the info much better. Aside from that it was simply a matter of keeping my eye on the goal and returning to the information until it stuck.
Just my two cents on the aviation degree route. I enrolled in a 2 year aviation program in August 2022. First day of ground school (and after they already got my money) the instructor told us that even though it’s advertised as a 2 year program, it’s really a 3-3.5 year program. After about a month and almost no flying I dropped out, got most of my money back, and started at a smaller part 61 school. I had my ppl 4 months later while none of my classmates have taken their checkride. Some of them still haven’t soloed nearly a year later. I’ll say that after having access to my ATP curriculum recently ATP is much more structured than a part 141 school.
Ah yes notes, my mom has always gotten so annoyed when I don't take notes🤣. That's definitely something I could and probably should work on. Answers like that are perfect, I understand that studying is a very personalized endeavor, I think it'll take trying out different techniques until something sticks. Thank you!
I’m with Adam on this one. The key is figuring out how you study best. It’s a lot of information in a short amount of time. Learning ways to process and learn that information in a timely manner is a skill that will help you in flight school all the way through initial training environments at future airlines. Think of it as just as much of a learned skill than landings.
I’m a note taker as well. If I can write it down then organize it in a study guide that makes sense, I can start to correlate and understand the information more than just simply rote memory.